Caterpillar Dreams

Another successful collaboration between two well-loved children’s authors – Jeanne Willis’ language is simple yet lyrical and Tony Ross matches its impact with his beautiful drawings. It’s a magical combination for a lovely story about two caterpillars who consider themselves sisters and look forward to their time together once they have grown into butterflies: ‘They would wake to the song of the blackbird. And fly through skies of forget-me-not blue. They would sip from buttercups… flit through sunbeams… and bathe in gold dust.’

But on the day when one of them emerges as a butterfly, she finds herself alone with no sign of her sister among the sunbeams. That night she dreams of her sister waking in the night: ‘Soaring through space. Skipping through moonbeams. Bathing in stardust.’ The two meet at dawn and find that one is a butterfly and one a moth, dreaming different dreams, waking to different birdsong, but both beautiful in their own way and both part of nature’s plan: ‘We cannot all be butterflies it seems. The world needs moths just like it needs the moon. That’s what keeps it turning, turning, turning.’

The illustrations on the last couple of pages bring the human connection to the fore: two children walk hand in hand in the field below the butterfly and moth. The last double spread, with beautiful simplicity juxtaposes the threads woven through the story. On the one hand, with the day fully dawned, the butterfly landing on the girl’s hand. On the other, the boy blissfully asleep and the moth flitting by in the night sky visible through his window.