Here are 69 books that Bicycling with Butterflies fans have personally recommended if you like
Bicycling with Butterflies.
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Outdoors has always been a nourishing place for me, even when I edged into risky or dangerous places, especially solo. When I got rid of my car (for financial reasons), I found my options to reach outdoor adventures limited. Soon after, I began working in transportation, tourism, and recreation and sought ways for everyone to access outdoor recreational opportunities, regardless of their abilities or any limiting barriers. Slow travel is broadly inclusive, enabling anyone to benefit from outdoor experiences and their transformative potential. Slow travel helped me feel less alone, more connected, more balanced emotionally, healthier physically, and more creative; it revealed the path to Love.
This book broadened my understanding of what it means for the outdoors to be a place where everyone feels they are welcome and belong. I felt Whitely’s discomfort and shame at being a tall, overweight woman among slender, fit climbers on Mt. Kilimanjaro.
I celebrated how she transformed shame into motivation. I could also feel the effort of lifting heavy legs at altitude. I appreciated her attention to the world around her, the guides, the camp staff, and the local language. She gave me a picture of the landscape, people, and sound of the place.
Kara knew she could reach the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. She had done it once before. That's why, when she failed in a second attempt, it brought her so low. As she struggled with food addiction and looked for ways to cope with feelings of failure and shame, Kara's weight shot to more than 300 pounds. Deep in her personal gorge, Kara realized the only way out was up. She resolved to climb the mountain again,and this time, she would reach the summit without waiting for her plus-sized status to disappear. Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds is…
Outdoors has always been a nourishing place for me, even when I edged into risky or dangerous places, especially solo. When I got rid of my car (for financial reasons), I found my options to reach outdoor adventures limited. Soon after, I began working in transportation, tourism, and recreation and sought ways for everyone to access outdoor recreational opportunities, regardless of their abilities or any limiting barriers. Slow travel is broadly inclusive, enabling anyone to benefit from outdoor experiences and their transformative potential. Slow travel helped me feel less alone, more connected, more balanced emotionally, healthier physically, and more creative; it revealed the path to Love.
I’m not much of a runner, but I was so impressed by Valerio’s effort and description of running the Javelina Jundred I thought I might try it myself one day. And then I thought, who the heck am I kidding? And then I heard Valerio’s encouragement, and I put the idea back on the table.
I love this memoir’s optimism and positivity. Valerio’s story is an example of the possibilities of loving myself, treating myself generously, and recognizing my efforts. She reminds me that when I bring my loving heart to other people, they respond in kind. When I remember what’s good about a challenging situation—like, I wanted to do it—it’s easier to find fun, pleasure, or satisfaction in the moment.
Runners' vocabulary is full of acronyms like DNS for "Did Not Start" and DNF for "Did Not Finish," but when Mirna Valerio stepped up to the starting line, she needed a new one: DNQ for "Did Not Quit."
Valerio has tied on her running shoes all across the country, from the dusty back roads of central New Jersey to the busy Route 222 corridor in Pennsylvania to the sweltering deserts of Arizona. When you meet her on the trail, you might be surprised to see she doesn't quite fit the typical image of a long-distance runner. She's neither skinny nor…
Outdoors has always been a nourishing place for me, even when I edged into risky or dangerous places, especially solo. When I got rid of my car (for financial reasons), I found my options to reach outdoor adventures limited. Soon after, I began working in transportation, tourism, and recreation and sought ways for everyone to access outdoor recreational opportunities, regardless of their abilities or any limiting barriers. Slow travel is broadly inclusive, enabling anyone to benefit from outdoor experiences and their transformative potential. Slow travel helped me feel less alone, more connected, more balanced emotionally, healthier physically, and more creative; it revealed the path to Love.
Before reading this book, I thought the most inclusive version of the slow travel principle of micro-travel and mindfulness was going outside and experiencing the weather. But because of a mysterious illness that left her bedridden, Bailey could not go outside nor look out the window. Yet, she wrote about the habits and hijinks of a tiny snail a friend brought her in a pot of violets.
I loved that Bailey found snail “bites” on paper and then explained how a snail’s mouth works and why the hole in the paper was square-shaped. The snail becomes Bailey’s connection to the outdoors (or wildness), where she finds hope and agency. My lesson: a terrarium can be as (or more) therapeutic to someone’s spirit as walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago.
While an illness keeps her bedridden, Elisabeth Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence in a terrarium alongside her bed. She enters the rhythm of life of this mysterious creature, and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, she shares the inspiring and intimate story of her close encounter with Neohelix albolabris - a common woodland snail.
Intrigued by the snail's world - from its strange anatomy to its mysterious courtship activities - she becomes a fascinated and amused…
Outdoors has always been a nourishing place for me, even when I edged into risky or dangerous places, especially solo. When I got rid of my car (for financial reasons), I found my options to reach outdoor adventures limited. Soon after, I began working in transportation, tourism, and recreation and sought ways for everyone to access outdoor recreational opportunities, regardless of their abilities or any limiting barriers. Slow travel is broadly inclusive, enabling anyone to benefit from outdoor experiences and their transformative potential. Slow travel helped me feel less alone, more connected, more balanced emotionally, healthier physically, and more creative; it revealed the path to Love.
I loved the voice and turns of phrase in this book. Signing up for the Mongolian Derby (a ten-day horse race on 25 different semi-wild ponies across 1000km of Mongolia) seemed like a lark for nineteen-year-old Prior-Palmer. Knowing at the outset she won the race kept me turning the page to discover how the hell someone who seemed more squirrel than human accomplished such a feat.
Some of my favorite parts were when she tuned into the ponies she rode and imagined what they had to say. I kept thinking her positivity, humor, care for the ponies, and willingness to embrace Mongolian culture and hospitality were the secret weapons to get her across the finish line.
"Think the next Educated or Wild. Palmer’s memoir of beating the odds to become a horse champion is an inspiring saga of perseverance—and a classic underdog tale." —Entertainment Weekly
At the age of nineteen, Lara Prior–Palmer discovered a website devoted to “the world’s longest, toughest horse race”―an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of twenty–five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her.
I’ve been fascinated with the natural world for as long as I can remember, spending many happy hours in my childhood exploring forests, splashing in creeks, and hiking in parks with my family. Devouring books from the local library and participating in workshops at our local science center fed my interest and built a strong foundation in science. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more fascinated by the tension between science’s goal to neatly classify and nature’s riotous complexity. It’s the exceptions, the grey, that keep me interested and draw in my students. I am an experienced science teacher and award-winning author of books for teachers and kids.
When I picture a butterfly, I imagine a delicate, lovely creature gliding across the sky. Not a foul-smelling flying creature that feeds on rotting flesh. But that’s the secret side of our (formerly) favorite insects that we meet through our knowledgeable monarch butterfly narrator.
My students couldn’t get enough of this fascinatingly disgusting book.
Warning -- this book contains top-secret information about butterflies! Prepare to be shocked and grossed out by this hilarious and totally true picture book introduction to a fascinating insect.
Butterflies are beautiful and quiet and gentle and sparkly . . . but that's not the whole truth. Butterflies can be GROSS. And one butterfly in particular is here to let everyone know! Talking directly to the reader, a monarch butterfly reveals how its kind is so much more than what we think. Did you know some butterflies enjoy feasting on dead animals, rotten fruit, tears and even poop? Some butterflies…
My love for wildlife has produced several award-winning nonfiction books about animals for children (bats, lizards, dragonflies, hummingbirds, and more). To observe wildlife, I travel often to wild areas, such as the Amazon, Galapagos Island, the Pantanal. A former full professor at Miami Dade College, I taught Creative Writing, English Composition, and Survey of Children’s Literature and was an adviser to the college’s award-winning literary magazine. My children’s nonfiction picture books about wild animals have won several awards: Silver Eureka for nonfiction, Silver Nautilus, two Bronze Florida Book Awards, and a Purple Dragonfly honor. Born in Brazil, I have lived in Miami for most of my life.
This past year, I have been fascinated by butterflies, and especially the monarchs and their utterly magnificent flights of migration. But there are other books about monarch butterflies, so why this one? It is a story, fictitious admittedly, about how a group of children with passion and love for nature and butterflies face a growing problem using grassroots activism. It is based on what children and communities are doing to help butterflies all over the country and on the real issue of the decline of the monarch butterfly. It is sure to inspire the budding environmental activist.
Butterflies Belong Here is a powerful story of everyday activism and hope.
In this moving story of community conservation, a girl finds a home in a new place and a way to help other small travelers.
This book is about the real change children can make in conservation and advocacy-in this case, focusing on beautiful monarch butterflies.
* From Deborah Hopkinson and Meilo So, the acclaimed team behind Follow the Moon Home
* An empowering, classroom-ready read
* The protagonist is a girl whose family has recently immigrated to the United States.
After being rejected in school, because I had to move with my family again and again, I never had really friends and knew how being left alone and rejected felt. So I put my nose into books and developed a love for writing. Since I didn’t know what to do with them, I left them alone when I married. After being diagnosed with cancer later in my life, I couldn’t go back to work, I remembered my love to write and read so I started to write short stories again. I want to help young people going through similar rejections and bullying, to lift them up, and take the negativity out of their minds.
This is a brilliant tale about a little egg that becomes a caterpillar and transforms into a beautiful Monarch.
I love animal stories, so I would always recommend this story to anyone.
He is asking his friends eating away on juice leaves, the sparrow, the toat, and the rabbit how he could get wings. He wanted desperately to fly.
The answer was: Just have patience and follow your instincts.
Matilda was doing so until she ate so many leaves that she changed once more and fell asleep. Waking up, she was amazed to see that she had wings. But they wouldn’t work, she had to keep flapping them until, finally, she flew off.
Matilda is not only a little butterfly story, it shows you that whatever you are going to do, have patience, follow your dream or instincts, and never give up.
Inspire the Kids with an Award-winning (Excellence in Children's Literature) Monarch Butterfly Tale. In this age of instant gratification, there's an award-winning children's picture book out that teaches kids that patience and hard work really do pay off.
'AMAZING MATILDA: A Monarch's Tale' is a timely tale that follows MATILDA, a tiny monarch caterpillar, from the time she hatches from her egg on a giant milkweed leaf until she realizes her dream to fly. The story provides challenges and adventure at every turn.
Grandparents, parents and teachers will find that AMAZING MATILDA is a book that kids will want to…
I am captivated and never cease to be astonished by the seemingly endless variety of ways in which coevolution shapes the millions of species on earth into intricate and ever-changing webs of life. The reasons for my fascination are simple. Most species require other species to survive or reproduce, which means that the evolution of biodiversity is as much about evolution of the links among species as it is about evolution of the species themselves. I find immense joy in following the connections among species within the web of life, trying to understand how coevolution has shaped, and relentlessly reshapes, each link. There are always surprises along the way.
Plants and insects make up most of the species on earth, and they have spent millions of years interacting and coevolving with each other. In this book, Anurag Agrawal weaves together what scientists have learned about one of the most charismatic of these interactions, those between milkweeds and monarch butterflies. He explores why the evolution of these interactions never ceases, but he also shows us just how difficult it can be to sort out how particular species coevolve. The book is a window into why the interactions between plants and insects may be the most diverse interactions that have ever evolved between complex organisms. Agrawal is a leading researcher on the evolution of interactions between plants and insects, and, fortunately, he is also an absorbing writer.
The fascinating and complex evolutionary relationship of the monarch butterfly and the milkweed plant Monarch butterflies are one of nature's most recognizable creatures, known for their bright colors and epic annual migration from the United States and Canada to Mexico. Yet there is much more to the monarch than its distinctive presence and mythic journeying. In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed--a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged--and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an…
I’ve been getting kids out into nature as an environmental education professional for over 30 years, in the garden, in the mountains, at the seashore, and in nearby nature. My life’s work, whether I am writing or teaching, is to help people experience the wonder of the natural world. I believe that children and adults need access to nature to grow and thrive, to find peace in a busy world, and to connect with each other. I know that, just like weeds, we can find a way to navigate the challenges in our lives when we connect with nature’s sustaining goodness wherever we find it.
Monarch butterflies make a migration of thousands of miles every year, visiting milkweed plants throughout the USA and Canada before migrating south to overwinter in Central Mexico. This lyrical and narrative nonfiction science mystery tells the story of how scientists and ordinary people – citizen scientists – discovered the paths monarchs take in their annual journey. Use this to begin an exploration of how regular folks can help preserve nature by participating in citizen science projects, and to emphasize that there is often more to nature’s mysteries than meets the eye.
2020 Golden Kite Nonfiction Honor Award 2020 EUREKA Excellence in Nonfiction Honor Award 2020 Finalist AAAS/Subaru Award 2020 Kirkus Best Picture Books 2021 Bank Street Best Children's Books 2020 NCTE Notable Book
For decades, as the monarch butterflies swooped through every year like clockwork, people from Canada to the United States to Mexico wondered, "Where do they go?" In 1976 the world learned the answer: after migrating thousands of miles, the monarchs roost by the millions in an oyamel grove in Central Mexico's mountains. But who solved this mystery? Was it the scientist or the American adventurer? The citizen scientists…
I’m a Sibert Honor author and write books for kids and teens about nature. Part biography, part science adventure, my books introduce readers to real scientists and the unexpected twists and turns of their discoveries. The more I research the more I discover hidden connections to our natural world that humble me and fill me with gratitude. I do my best to share these connections with readers in an accurate, truthful way to help them find their own “ah-ha” moments in life. I want them to say, “I can do this, too!”
This book challenges kids to get outside and observe the wildlife in their own communities—the BEST way to connect to nature. Written as a field guide, this book is meant to be shoved in a backpack and consulted on the trail. Mary Kay Carson shows kids how to record observations in a nature journal and includes many projects with materials found around the house. Before you know it, your kids will be local wildlife experts. When kids understand nature, they care about it, and when they care, they protect it.
Kids can make the world better for wild animals, starting right in their own backyards! With hands-on activities, from a Wildlife Spotting Fort to a Sand Print Track Trap, along with habitat projects and wildlife field guides, this book teaches young nature observers how identify which animals live nearby. DIY projects such as making a Frog Pond out of a kiddie pool, planting a pollinator garden for bees, painting a bat house, and building a lodge for lizards help kids create a welcome haven for animal friends. Throughout the book, habitat maps and fun facts profile 84 North American wildlife…
