The plan is to eat as many leaves as you can.
Then weave a cocoon.
Two weeks later…
TA-DA, you’re a moth!
With wings to fly! Easy peasy! I can’t wait.
Dawn and her caterpillar friends have known each other since they were larvae – and now they have a plan. They are eating every leaf they can find so they can get ready to build cocoons and, when their wings have grown, become moths. Dawn gets busy and soon she is snug in her cocoon. But inside, she waits impatiently, worrying whether her wings will develop, and how she will get out.
Cocoon is a sumptuous hard cover picturebook about the development of a moth from caterpillar to hatching, told through the voice of Dawn, with illustrations filled with whimsy and colour showing Dawn and her friends preparing for their metamorphosis. Once Dawn is in her cocoon, each spread shows just her, through a cross section of the cocoon, and illustrator Aura Parker cleverly uses a range of movements and some anthropomorphic props (books, a lantern, and even a teapot) to avoid repetition and add humour. The final images, showing Dawn and her friends emerging, are stunning, as are the endpapers.
Perfect to be enjoyed for the story alone, Cocoon would also have lots of classroom applicability.
Cocoon, by Aura Parker
Scholastic, 2019
ISBN 9781742765129
