book cover

My Butterfly Bouquet

by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Hannah Peck

Interest age: 4 to 8
Reading age: 6+

Published by Wren & Rook, 2020

  • Picture books

About this book

A little girl leaves a hospital after an illness and her dad takes her to an indoor glasshouse to visit some butterflies. As the little girl watches the butterflies, her dad explains to her how they lay their eggs, why some of them have brightly coloured wings and spots and how caterpillars make a chrysalis.

As the little girl recovers from her illness, she grows stronger by helping her parents plant flowers containing lots of nectar for the butterflies, any by the time summer comes around, dad says that the little girl is blooming like a flower and growing like a weed! Even better, the garden is full of butterflies – a testament to everyone’s hard work, and a symbol of the little girl’s own recovery and transformation.

At the back of the book, there’s a wonderfully detailed guide to the life cycle of the butterfly, information about why butterflies need wild flowers and also about what you can do to help the butterflies in your area.

As ever, Nicola Davies’ books are full of lovely details about nature, and in this book, she has deftly woven a story about a child recovering from illness into a story about how we can also help revive butterflies, a species that are under threat.

About the author

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany.

Nicola trained as a zoologist, taking a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge. She spent some years as a field biologist and studied humpback and sperm whales, and bats, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and then presenter.

Following the start of her writing career, Nicola became a senior lecturer in creative writing, at Bath Spa University but has been writing full time for over a decade. She now regularly runs workshops for children and adults to help them find their voices as writers and advocates for nature. In 2017, she was the first recipient of the SLA’s award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Non-fiction and in 2018 had four picture books longlisted for the Greenaway Award.

Find out what Nicola Davies is up to as our Writer in Residence

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