Sometimes we do not need to see the horror
Sometimes we do not need to see it all
Sometimes we just need enough of a glimpse
To get us thinking and talking
About what we already know
About how we feel
About how others act and feel
Sometimes more than things literally laid out
We need symbolism and representation
An absence of colour
A sentence standing alone
A carefully chosen creature
A flower
Saving The Butterfly
Is a stunning picture book
For readers of all ages and experiences
To access at different levels
To understand to different degrees
To take different knowledge and understanding
From each of it’s beautifully illustrated pages
Saving The Butterfly is a refugee story
It is a story of love and loss
It is a story of courage, fear and anxiety
It is a sibling story
It is a tale of hope
The healing power of nature
And the strength of the human spirit
The children and I read this book together
We used the brilliant teaching notes from Walker Books
To guide our discussion as we read the story
We were all incredibly moved by the story of two children
Who had escaped persecution
Fled from harm
Lost all they loved and owned
To seek sanctuary in a new place
Hoping to find a new home
The use of colour in this book
Is brilliant and beautiful
The darkness and lack of colour in the refugee camp
The dark shadows that surround the big sister
Contrast with the colours of the children playing outside
Including her little brother
The two siblings arrived together from across the stormy sea
The boy is young and soon forgets much of what he has been through
But the girl cannot forget
Their experiences haunt her dreams
And her anxiety builds
She finds it impossible to leave the walls of their new broken house
Even when her little brother asks her too
And tries to help her by bringing the outside in
This story shows how two people process trauma differently
I empathise with this after losing our baby daughter
My husband and I grieve completely differently
It can be very difficult to navigate as grown ups
It must be enormously hard as children
Unimaginably hard for most of us
Saving The Butterfly
Sees two young children
Taken from the boat that carried the across the sea
To a broken house in a refugee camp
Bordered with barbed wire
They have nothing
Apart from a crochet blanket and cuddly bunny
Given to them by volunteers
The siblings have only each other
Until the little one starts to make friends
And play with the other children at the camp
The big sister stays inside in the shadows of the house
And the shadows of her heart and mind
She is wrapped always in the blanket
The little brother does not know how to help his sister
But he tries
He draws pictures and brings flowers
And one day brings a butterfly in a jar
My children aged 5 – 12
Knew at once that the butterfly
Represented the sister
Trapped inside
Unable to escape
Not able to go outside
They knew that if the little girl
Found a way to help the butterfly
She would also help herself
By saving the butterfly
She would be saving herself
By setting the butterfly free
She would take the very first step to freeing herself
This is a story that has moved me deeply
I really wanted to reach out to the two children
And just hold them
And tell them that it would all be okay
That they were safe now
By the end of the story the big sister is outside
With the other children
But within the barbed wire borders of the refugee camp
We all wonder how their story ends
Will they ever be truly free like a butterfly?
We do hope so
We do so hope so