The narrator recounts how, as a young girl, she saved a larva from a jay and then, with the help of her grandfather, created a colorful butterfly house, a painted garden in a box decorated with pictures of flowers from which butterflies feed the nectar. Over the days she watched the larva transform itself into a chrysalis and later emerge as a Painted Lady butterfly which she released back to nature. Years later when she is much older, the narrator describes how she is visited every spring by butterflies who come to her garden of flowers, the ones she had painted long ago with her grandfather in her butterfly house. This touching, evocative story, illustrated with gouache paintings of the narrator, her grandfather as well as close-ups showing the metamorphosis of the Painted Ladies, is followed by detailed information for creating a house in which to raise a butterfly, including care and feeding instructions.

See also:
Melissa Stewart's A Place for Butterflies