The Girl and the Little Butterfly

In a small house with a big green garden, a girl with warm light-brown skin and curly dark brown hair in two short puffs starts each morning by carrying her little green watering can outside to watch the flowers wake up. One sunny day, a small orange butterfly with black-edged wings and tiny white spots dances past her nose, and she sits very still on the grass so it will not fly away. Her tall, kind teacher in a soft blue cardigan kneels beside her and opens a notebook to explain that the butterfly was not always a butterfly: it begins as a tiny egg under a leaf, hatches into a hungry caterpillar, forms a chrysalis, and finally emerges with soft, wet wings to dry in the sun.

The next morning, the girl searches under every leaf and finds a pale egg no bigger than a dot. With her cheerful friend, who has short black coils of hair and freckles across his nose, she watches and waits through each stage, learning that nature changes through remarkable stages and asks only for time and care. When the chrysalis finally cracks open one bright morning, the children see the crumpled orange and black wings spread and shimmer before the butterfly drifts away over the garden. Inspired, the girl proposes making a butterfly garden at school. This tale by Aysel Banu YAVUZAL can be read on Masal İzle.