Notes: Thanks to Mari and Sammy for their support and friendship.
Readers and REAL McRollers - thank you for your support. I know many of you like the library stories and that always warms my librarian heart.
Hope you enjoy!
Metamorphosis (A McRoll in the REAL World Story)
"Oh wow, look at all the butterflies!" Jacob said as he led the way into the lobby of the library.
Hanging from the high ceiling for all to see were dozens of paper butterflies.
He jumped, swinging one arm in the direction of the decorations. "Those are really high," he said, not having even come close to touching one.
"They're beautiful!" Kaitlyn said, staring up at the sight.
"Whoa, there's gotta be, like, a hundred of them," Dylan added.
"I think you're about right," Joseph said, Angie's diaper bag slung over one shoulder.
"Do you see the butterflies, sweetie?" Elizabeth asked, pointing them out to Angie.
"Ahhyi!" Angie said, bouncing in her grandmother's arms.
Kaitlyn smiled. "No wonder they're having a butterfly program today."
"My LEGO Robotics Club is that way," Dylan said, pointing toward the meeting rooms. "I'll meet you guys when it's over."
"Okay, we'll be down in the children's room when you're done," Elizabeth said.
"Making butterflies!" Kaitlyn said with a beaming smile.
They waited until Dylan had disappeared into the proper meeting room before turning toward the rest of the library.
"All right, let's go see about these butterflies," Joseph said.
They headed down to the storytime room which also doubled as a program room for older kids. Jacob hurried the last few steps when he spotted his favorite librarian.
"Miss Kristin! When did you hang all those butterflies?" he asked.
She laughed. "Well, I didn't personally hang them, but our awesome maintenance department put them up this week."
"Did they hang them up because you're having a butterfly program?"
"Actually, the other way around. I knew they'd be going up, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a program about butterflies."
"I think they're beautiful," Kaitlyn said as the rest of the group reached them.
"Thank you, Kaitlyn," Kristin said. "Are you all ready to learn about the butterfly life cycle?"
"I already know!" Jacob said. "Caterpillars go into a cocoon and they come out butterflies!"
"That's what I thought, too," Kristin said. "But I learned I wasn't exactly right."
Jacob cocked his head in confusion. "Huh?"
Kristin smiled enigmatically. "Come on in," she said. "You'll see." As the kids made their way inside, Kristin greeted Joseph, Elizabeth, and Angie. "And what a special treat! Angie's here with Grandma and Grandpa."
"Yep, Esther had to handle a small emergency at the cupcake truck, so we get a little bonus time this week," Joseph said, giving Angie a little tickle.
She giggled briefly before smiling broadly at Kristin and waving one arm excitedly.
"Ohh, I bet you think Miss Kristin is about to start singing like at storytime, don't you, honey?" Elizabeth asked.
Kristin laughed. "Not today." She paused thoughtfully. "Although, I do know a butterfly song or two … so maybe you're right after all, Angie."
Five minutes later, Kristin stood in front of a large screen with several butterfly pictures projected onto it from a nearby laptop. Around thirty school-age kids sat on the floor in front of her while adults stood or sat in chairs behind them.
"Did anyone happen to notice anything interesting when they walked into the library today?" she asked leadingly.
As several kids raised their hands, one shouted, "There's gum on the ground in the parking lot!"
Kristin laughed, then made a face. "Okay eww. Thanks for telling me. We'll have to ask maintenance to check on that." She smiled. "But that wasn't the interesting thing I was thinking of." She pointed to a girl to her right. "What did you see?"
"Butterflies!" the girl said with a broad smile.
"Yes! We have butterflies hanging up in our lobby! Did anyone notice anything in particular about those butterflies?"
She pointed to different children to hear their observations.
"They look real!"
"They're really high!"
"There's like a million of them!"
"Can I have one of the butterflies?"
Kristin smiled at that and said, "Even better, you're going to make some of your own today." She saw Kaitlyn slowly put her hand in the air. "Yes, Kaitlyn?"
"There were only two different kinds of butterflies," Kaitlyn said, her voice confident.
Kristin smiled proudly. "You are absolutely right!" She nodded to one of her volunteers who changed the slide on the laptop presentation to one with a bluish-greenish butterfly, and an orange and black with a few white spots. "We have paper replicas of two different kinds of butterflies hanging up. The Kamehameha butterfly and the Koa butterfly. Those are the two species, or kinds, of butterflies that are native to Hawaii. All the other butterflies you might see on the islands were brought here either accidentally or on purpose from the mainland."
"Like the ones by Aunt Catherine's butterfly bushes," Jacob said, looking over his shoulder at Joseph and Elizabeth.
"Hey, my mom has a butterfly bush, too!" another boy said.
"Let's talk about the butterfly's life cycle," Kristin said, bringing the group back to focus. "Because they don't start out as butterflies, right?"
"No!" a girl said. "They're caterpillars! Like The Very Hungry Caterpillar!"
"They are," Kristin said. "And before that, they start off as eggs."
A new slide appeared with pictures of tiny eggs attached to different leaves.
"It's important that the eggs be laid on a leaf," Kristin said, "and on the right kind of leaf, because when the caterpillar hatches, it's going to need to eat. And eat. And eat!"
The slide changed to one with pictures of different caterpillars, mostly green, but other colors as well.
"Look at that one!" Jacob, sitting front and center, cried out. "It's got spikes!"
"There are lots of different caterpillars," Kristin said. "And they all turn into different kinds of butterflies. Let's see what happens next." She nodded for her volunteer to change the slide. "When the caterpillar is done growing, they form themselves into a pupa also called a chrysalis. A lot of people think this is a cocoon, but I recently learned the difference. A cocoon is a casing made of silk and sometimes leaves and other things that certain kinds of caterpillars make around themselves so they can turn into moths. But a butterfly caterpillar doesn't do that." She pointed to the picture which showed the process in several steps. "It hooks itself to a branch and then it's outer skin becomes really hard to protect it while it does something amazing inside. It changes! Does anyone know the super scientific work for this kind of change?"
A girl raised her hand. "Metamorphosis," she said when Kristin pointed to her.
"That's right. Can we all say that? Metamorphosis."
"Metamorphosis," the group repeated.
"Perfect!" Kristin said. "When their metamorphosis is complete, they emerge from their chrysalis completely different."
The slide changed again to show this process.
"Now what are they?" Kristin asked.
"Butterflies!" the group cried.
"Yes!"
The final slide appeared with an array of butterflies, including the two endemic to Hawaii.
"Within a couple of hours, they'll have figured out how to fly and then they'll go looking for a mate. Pretty soon the female butterfly will lay her eggs on the right kind of leaf and the cycle starts all over again."
"That's so cool!" Jacob exclaimed.
"I think so, too," Kristin said, grinning at him. "But you know, it's kind of a lot to remember, so I thought we could make some crafts so you can go out into the world and tell everyone about the butterfly life cycle. What do you think?"
"Yeah!" several kids said, already standing.
"Let's do it!" Jacob cried, pumping a fist. "I'm making mine with spikes!"
As the program was wrapping up, Steve and Catherine entered along with Dylan.
"Hey, look who we found headed your way," Steve said, putting a hand on Dylan's shoulder.
"Bah aaaah!" Angie said immediately, spotting her parents.
Catherine scooped her up from Joseph and kissed her. "Hi, baby girl. Have you been having fun at the library?"
"Ahhyi!"
Steve leaned in to give her his own kiss. "That sounds like a yes."
"Ah bah da ah!"
"This doesn't look familiar," Catherine said, eyeing the butterfly onesie Angie was wearing. "I'm pretty sure I know all of Angie's butterfly clothes."
"Oh, just something we had at the condo," Elizabeth said, unashamed. "It's not like we bought it special or anything," she added with a wink.
Catherine snorted, shaking her head.
"How was Robotics?" Joseph asked Dylan.
"Awesome," he replied, bouncing a bit in a way that was very like his younger brother. "We've got our new robot designed and we're ready to start building!"
"That's great," Elizabeth said, smiling at him.
"Dylan, look!" Jacob said with equal excitement. "We made life cycles out of pasta! Well, and beans." He pointed to a paper plate, divided into four quadrants. "These beans on the leaf are the eggs. This curly pasta …" He looked at Elizabeth.
"Rotini," she said.
"Rotini," he repeated, "is the caterpillar. Oops." The piece of pasta rolled as he touched it. "Miss Kristin!" he yelled to the librarian across the room. "I need some more glue! Oh, there's some." He grabbed a glue bottle from the table and squirted more on to his construction paper leaf, putting his rotini caterpillar back into place. "This shell is the cocoon," he continued, pointing to a medium-sized pasta shell in the next quadrant. He shook his head. "I mean, the chrystalis."
"Chrysalis," Elizabeth corrected.
"Chrysalis. And this is the butterfly!" he finished triumphantly, pointing to a piece of farfalle, or bow-tie pasta.
"Butterfly life cycle out of pasta," Steve quipped with a smile. "Nonna would approve."
"That is really cool, Jacob," Catherine said. "But back up a second. This isn't a cocoon?" she asked, pointing to his pasta shell.
"Nope. Miss Kristin taught us."
"Yes, we all learned something today," Joseph said with a smile. "Apparently moth caterpillars form cocoons. Butterfly caterpillars form a chrysalis."
"What's the difference?" Steve asked.
Jacob shrugged. "Their skin gets hard or something. Look! My caterpillar has spikes!" He held up another craft they had made: a pipe cleaner caterpillar connected by a string to a tissue paper butterfly. Jacob's green caterpillar had a couple of small brown pieces of pipe cleaner twisted around it to form spikes.
"Here, Kaitlyn can explain," Elizabeth said, putting a hand on the girl's back as she returned from talking to Miss Kristin.
"Explain what?" Kaitlyn asked.
"The difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis."
"Oh." She straightened, smiling. "A moth caterpillar makes a cocoon out of silk and leaves and things like that around itself, but a butterfly caterpillar changes itself into a chrysalis. I asked Miss Kristin more and she said the caterpillars shed their skin and then the next skin becomes really hard, and that's the chrysalis."
"Well, what do you know?" Catherine said, smiling at her father. She reached over and squeezed his arm. "Either way, the saying still works."
"What saying?" Jacob asked.
Kaitlyn gasped. "Oh! I know! About the butterflies! Grace told me! How if nothing ever changed, there'd be no such thing as butterflies." She looked at Jacob. "It's a saying. It means, like, things change, and sometimes it's hard, but that's okay, because the changes make you into what you're supposed to be: a butterfly."
"I think caterpillars are pretty cool," Jacob said, glancing down at his pipe cleaner creation. He looked back up and smiled. "But it is really awesome how it changes into something totally different like a butterfly."
"Definitely awesome," Joseph echoed.
"And Miss Kristin told me she learned there is one kind of butterfly that does make a sort of cocoon instead of a chrysalis." She paused for a beat, recalling the name. "Parnassian."
Joseph smiled. "You know, you always learn something when you go to the library." He paused and looked around, his smile growing at what he saw.
Dylan had begun animatedly describing his club's robot plans to Steve who was clearly giving the middle-schooler his full attention. Jacob had seen a younger boy at the next table struggling to tie his piece of yarn around his caterpillar and had stepped over to help. Kaitlyn stood listening intently to Catherine, fresh from a full day at work and now with Angie in her arms, explaining what she knew about a government sponsored breeding and release program of Kamehameha butterflies at the Honolulu Zoo.
Joseph shared a soft smile with Elizabeth. "And cocoon or chrysalis, I love watching what's emerged."
Hope you enjoyed!
Note: Please see Sammy's marvelous No Such Thing as Butterflies for the whole butterfly story. Tissue alerts apply.
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