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A review by heykellyjensen
The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect by Wendy Williams
It’s almost universal that people love butterflies. It’s almost equally universal people don’t like moths. But the difference between a butterfly and a moth isn’t what you might think it is. Instead, it’s a small body part that controls how the wings move and that’s about it.
If that has you intrigued, this book will be your jam like it was mine.
Set up in three parts: past, present, and future, Williams -- who writes in a super approachable, delighted manner, but with great research to buoy the book -- takes a deep dive into the butterfly and her allure.
A wholly fascinating book, I learned so much about butterflies. Their wings are actually made of scales, which I didn’t know, and more, the blue butterflies that are so highly prized are such because they are among the few things in nature where blue is an actual hue, as opposed to a reflection of light upon their wings. Williams doesn’t go into the thievery of butterflies as much as I’d hoped, but with name drops, I know there are a ton of people whose stories and crimes I’ll be Googling later. I also had no idea the black on the wings of the monarch are actually veins. Oh, and the book digs into how horrible the male monarchs are toward the females when they want to mate . . . at least in the early generations. Once they’re onto the fourth generation, or the ones that will migrate, the females are much more safe, as the males have lost a lot of their machismo. If you’re unfamiliar with the ideas of monarch generations, you’ll get up to speed here, too.
Williams is delighted by everything she learns, and by turns, it makes the reader delighted, too. This isn’t an especially long book, and while it’s well-researched, it’s a breezy read. In the author’s note, Williams mentions being almost 70 (or in her 70s, I can’t entirely remember). I don’t remember the last time I read a book by an author who was older, so bonus points for that. It was neat to experience the world of butterflies through her eyes, and frankly, I’ll never look at them the same way through my own.
If that has you intrigued, this book will be your jam like it was mine.
Set up in three parts: past, present, and future, Williams -- who writes in a super approachable, delighted manner, but with great research to buoy the book -- takes a deep dive into the butterfly and her allure.
A wholly fascinating book, I learned so much about butterflies. Their wings are actually made of scales, which I didn’t know, and more, the blue butterflies that are so highly prized are such because they are among the few things in nature where blue is an actual hue, as opposed to a reflection of light upon their wings. Williams doesn’t go into the thievery of butterflies as much as I’d hoped, but with name drops, I know there are a ton of people whose stories and crimes I’ll be Googling later. I also had no idea the black on the wings of the monarch are actually veins. Oh, and the book digs into how horrible the male monarchs are toward the females when they want to mate . . . at least in the early generations. Once they’re onto the fourth generation, or the ones that will migrate, the females are much more safe, as the males have lost a lot of their machismo. If you’re unfamiliar with the ideas of monarch generations, you’ll get up to speed here, too.
Williams is delighted by everything she learns, and by turns, it makes the reader delighted, too. This isn’t an especially long book, and while it’s well-researched, it’s a breezy read. In the author’s note, Williams mentions being almost 70 (or in her 70s, I can’t entirely remember). I don’t remember the last time I read a book by an author who was older, so bonus points for that. It was neat to experience the world of butterflies through her eyes, and frankly, I’ll never look at them the same way through my own.