Finally, the best part of the whole project — the book celebration. Many people told me it was a smash hit. It was amazing to see how proud all the students were to sign their pages in the book. And we were all honored to have hundreds of community members attend and support both the book and the monarch butterfly. We had a packed room for the whole night. If you click on the above image, you can see me on the far right; like the student illustrators, I was busy signing books all night until my hand hurt. Luckily, a friend got a book signed for me with each signature in a different glittery color.
Mirabella the Monarch’s Magical Migration has been a year in the making, starting with meetings and grant writing. As the author-in-residence, I spent hundreds of untold hours, and including all the volunteers, staff and students, we have spent about 3000 hours to create this book to help save the butterflies, not including all the related projects, like:
- Planting a butterfly garden
- Raising and releasing butterflies
- A song by the music class about butterflies
- The Glow Show, a black light and bigger-than-life butterfly garden sculpture.
- Reading month
- And much more. Read about all the projects here.
In fact, I’ve been so busy that I didn’t have time to write a lot of updates about the project. Below is a small selection of photographs of our book celebration. One photo I missed was the project coordinator, Nuria Lopez, donating a 24×36″ framed class photo to the principal Ms Simmons. I hope it will be a timeless piece of art for the school office.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the 559 students and their parents. Thanks to the staff of Parker Woods Montessori; in particular, principal Whitney Simmons for her commitment to educating not only students but staff and parents, the art teacher Suzanne Nall for her artistic vision that is apparent in every illustration, PTO member and project coordinator Nuria Lopez, whose desire to make the world a better place for our children fueled every step, dedicated parent Allyson Stone-Weil for the bookmarks and helping whenever needed, teacher Beth Schlick for organizing the celebration events, and Jodi Weber for writing the grant. And thanks to the dozens of other volunteers who supported the project at each step. Hopefully, I honored everyone along the way.
