Saving the Butterfly: A Story about Refugees

A layered story that humanizes the refugee experience.

Affecting and emotional. . . Gorgeously evocative and textured mixed-media illustrations are predominantly gray at the beginning and incorporate more and more bright colors as the children respond positively to their environment.

With "nothing left from before,/ except each other," two siblings, portrayed with golden skin, journey on a boat in which they are the only ones left: "They could have died./ The bigger one thought they wouldn't survive," writes Cooper in plainspoken text. When they are rescued by "kind hands carrying them to land," they are also taken to a "broken house" in what appears to be a refugee camp. Though the younger brother seems to recover quickly from their unspecified ordeal, remembering little about "the time before," his sister struggles to move on ("The bigger one couldn't forget./ She felt she shouldn't forget"), and retreats into the broken house, "feeling safer there,/ in the real dark,/ hiding from the dark/ in her mind." Hoping to cheer her, the brother brings home a butterfly in a jar--which, when released, also needs space and time to find its way outside. Smith's moody mixed-media illustrations smartly use color to convey the story's tone, moving between shadowy and vividly hued images that mimic the sister's emotional arc in a hopeful story about emotional processing after trauma. Ages 4-8. (June)

Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

The idea that sometimes we can feel many complicated emotions all at once comes through loud and clear. . . . A layered story that humanizes the refugee experience.
—Kirkus Reviews 

Smith's mixedmedia illustrations convey the story's many moods and motifs through color: inky blacks for the sea rescue; drab pastels for the camp; sunny yellows when the boy brings his sister the butterfly; and intense reds and oranges on the butterfly's wings. . . . this exploration of trauma and its aftereffects should open up discussion and encourage empathy.
—Booklist

Soft mottling and crayon-like textures anchor the art in a steady stillness, while the palette is used with care and precision, consistently balancing bright, vibrant shades with darkened inks and smudgy grays. This is certainly more somber than Marwan's Where Butterflies Fill the Sky (BCCB 3/22), but pairing the two titles would make for a compelling exploration of rebuilding a life in an uncertain, and perhaps, unwanted, new home.
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books