The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez

The undocumented immigrant experience is told in this graphic novel memoir by Francisco Jimenez. 

Under The Wire

Francisco Jimenez lived in a small village, El Rancho Blanco, located several miles north of Guadalajara, Mexico. His father often spoke about crossing "La Frontera" - the border between Mexico and the state of California. Life is difficult in their village. Francisco and his older brother, Roberto had to do chores at four in the morning, sleep on dirt floors and use candles. Finally one day Francisco and his family take the bus to Guadalujara and then a train to Mexicali. They crossed "under the wire" into the United States during the night and were picked up by a woman in a truck. She took them to Guadalupe, a small town on the coast of California where they could work picking strawberries. However, there was no work for Francisco's family for two weeks.

Soledad

In Bakersfield, Francisco is left in the family's old jalopy to care for his six month old brother, Trampita while Papa, Mama and Roberto work to pick cotton. Francisco is lonely and tries to learn how to pick cotton, risking his family's job and leaving Trampita crying.

Inside Out

In this chapter, Francisco and his older brother Roberto attend school while the family is living in Santa Maria. It is late January and the family has just finished picking cotton in Corcoran.  Francisco is enrolled in Miss Scalapino's Grade 1 class. He cannot understand English but Francisco loves doing art every afternoon. One of his drawings wins first prize.

Miracle in Tent City

Francisco's family moved to a tent city in rural Santa Maria that was owned by Sheehey Strawberry Farms. This was a farm-worker labour camp comprised mostly of single men who like the Jimenez family had crossed illegally into America. In the camp, Francisco's mother had a baby, Juan Manuel whom they named Torito because he was ten pounds! When Torito was two months old he became very ill with a high fever. The family prayed to the Virgen de Guadalupe. No remedies seems to work, not even a healer they brought it. Eventually Torito had to be taken to the hospital. He eventually recovered as the family continued to pray.

El Angel de Oro

Corcoran in the cotton season is always rainy but one year it was very rainy. Francisco met Miguelito who was two years older and living in the same camp. The walked to school together and Francisco looked forward to seeing him again. However, he never saw Miguel after that day. Instead, Francisco spend the days saving the fish from the overflowing creek next to the camp, who were suffocating in the mud.

Christmas Gift

It is December and Francisco's parents are preparing to leave Corcoran. He overhears his parents telling a couple with a baby that they cannot purchase the beautiful handkerchief the wife has embroidered.  His family, now consisting of Papa, Mama, Roberto, Trampito, Torito and baby Ruben, move to Visalia where they are offered a tent and work in the cotton fields. At Christmas, the children get bags of candy while Mama is given the beautiful embroidered handkerchief they purchased from the poor couple.

Death Forgiven

In this short story, Francisco's beloved red, green, and yellow parrot named El Perico suffers an untimely demise. El Perico was attached to a cat, Catalina, who belonged to another migrant couple. When they came to visit without Cataline, El Perico began squawking and Francisco's father hit the bird and killed it. Although Francisco was devastated he prayed for his father.

Cotton Sack

Francisco's family left Mr. Jacobson's vineyards in Fresno to move to the cotton fields of Corcoran. The family now has a daughter, Rorra. As his parents prepared cotton sacks for work, Francisco also wants to help pick but doesn't have a sack. As the family continues to look for more work picking cotton, Francisco is determined to prove to Papa that he deserves his own sack. But when he does pick cotton with its prickly leaves, his hand are injured and he realizes he's not ready yet.

The Circuit

After strawberry season is over in Santa Maria, they move again finding work in the vineyard of Mr. Sullivan. After grape season is over, Francisco can attend school so he enters Mr. Lema's sixth grade class. Mr. Lema becomes Francisco's best friend, helping his with his English during lunch hour. One day he offers to teach Francisco how to play trumpet but Francisco's joy is shortlived. When he arrives home, he sees the packed boxes and knows the family is readying to move once again.

Learning the Game

In this story, school ends for the summer for Francisco, but he also knows he won't be returning until November, after strawberry season in Santa Maria, grapes in Fresno and cotton picking in Corcoran. When Francisco accompanies a new worker, Gabriel to help a sharecropper who is ill, the contratista, Mr. Diaz treats the new worker badly. Gabriel refuses to be treated like an animal and stands up to him. Later on , Francisco stands up to Carlos who won't allow Manuelito to play "kick the can" with them. While Francisco succeeds, Gabriel is fired and sent back to Mexico.

To Have and To Hold

Francisco had a penny collection that included an 1865 Indian head penny and a 1910 Lincoln head penny. He was very proud of this collection especially since the 1910 penny was given to him by Papa. It was made the year his Papa was born and also the year of the revolution in Mexico. The 1865 penny had come from a friend, Carl, whom Francisco befriended in fifth grade in Corcorcan. Francisco also had a treasured notebook that he had found in the city dump in Santa Maria. He used the notebook to write down new words and their definitions, as well as math and grammar rules to be memorized. One day after picking grapes for Mr. Patrini in Orosi, Francisco arrived home to discover his penny collection gone. His four year old sister Rorra had used them for the gum machine in the store. Although he was angry, his mother's story about the value of people before money helped calm him. In the end, Francisco and his family lost everything due to a fire in their house. Later Francisco was able to put the losses in perspective.

Moving Still

In this final story, Roberto is the only one working, as Francisco's papa is laid up because of a bad back. Torito, Trampito, Rorra, Ruben and Francisco are in school. But the la migra, or Immigration Law Enforcement Agents sweep through the camps and work fields. Francisco's father shows la migra his green card. They decide to return to the Bonetti Ranch in Santa Maria, moving into the rundown barracks. Roberto entered grade ten at Santa Maria High, while Francisco was in the eighth grade at El Camino Junior High. Francisco excels in school and he and Roberto work hard to help their family. But eventually la migra catch up with them too.

Discussion

The Circuit is the first graphic novel adaptation of Francisco Jimenez's autobiographical series of books. He published four books: The Circuit, Breaking Through, Reaching Out and Taking Hold. Each document a specific part of his life.

Francisco Jimenez was born in Tlaquepague, Mexico in 1943. He lived in the small town of El Rancho Blanco in the state of Jalisco, Mexico until he was four years old. At this time his family entered the United States illegally and worked as migrant farm workers. Because they moved frequently, Francisco attended school sporadically until he and his family were deported back to Mexico when he was in grade eight. They returned to the United States legally a few months later, settling as farm workers at Bonetti Ranch. 

With his family now settled in one place, Francisco was able to complete his high school education. He attended Santa Clara University earning a B.A. in Spanish Studies in 1966. He attended Columbia University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship earning both an Masters and Ph.D in Latin American Literature. 

Francisco became and American citizen in his junior year at Santa Clara and he also met his future wife, Laura Facchini there. Francisco taught first at Columbia University and then moved to Santa Clara University where he taught in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature until 2015.

His four books document the experience of migrant workers in America. In the graphic novel adaptation of The Circuit, Francisco Jimenez portrays the difficult life his family experienced as they worked as migrant farm labourers in California. They had left behind a life of poverty in Mexico with the belief that life in America would be economically much better. But because they were in the country illegally, poor living conditions, low wages and temporary work, and the threat of deportation were ever present.

The Circuit portrays many of the difficulties Francisco and his family faced as illegal migrant workers from the perspective of a child. In his Author's Note, Francisco writes, "It is based on my childhood experiences of growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. My intent in relating these experiences from the child's point of view is to have readers hear the child's voice, see through his eyes, and feel through his heart." This graphic novel accomplishes all of that and more in the form of thirteen short vignettes. 

 As a child of migrant farmers, Francisco struggled with the language barrier and inconsistent attendance at school. When Francisco attended school in grade one he couldn't understand his teacher because she was speaking in English. He received no help and resorted to daydreaming in order to quell his anxiety. Francisco writes "It was easier when Miss Scalapino read to the class from a book with illustrations. I would make up my own stories in Spanish, based on the pictures. Still, I wished I could understand what she was reading." It is not surprising therefore that he ended up repeating the grade. When he found a Spanish speaking friend at school, they were admonished for not speaking in English. Moves were frequent and could be sudden. For example, when Francisco's family were living in Corcoran, he began grade four but then left after three weeks when they moved to Visalia to find work. When he was older, Francisco was settling into grade six, eager to learn how to play the trumpet, only to find he must move yet again.

The graphic novel illustrates the poor living conditions endured by the migrant workers and their families: tents sometimes located near creeks that overflowed during the rainy season or near smelly dumps, abandoned or derelict wooden houses, and dilapidated garages. Francisco and his family often had to do repairs on the buildings they were given, to make them livable. While living in a tent city near Santa Maria, Francisco and his older brother, Roberto scavenged lumber from the dump to make a floor and fashion a cradle for the new baby. They would look for food in the trash behind the grocery stores so that Mama could make soup.

Despite all the hardships, Francisco and his family are a portrait of faith, perseverance, and ingenuity. When times were especially bad, Francisco and his family turned to prayer to sustain them. Francisco's mother is lovingly portrayed as the one person who was the foundation of their family, preparing delicious meals, and teaching forgiveness, love and generosity of spirit to Francisco and his siblings. They were hard-working, honest, and willing to help others, despite their extreme poverty. Like millions of Americans and Mexicans, they had dreams of a better life and willingly endured tremendous hardships in the attempt to achieve it. In his Author's Note, Francisco Jimenez writes, "I wrote The Circuit to record part of my family's history but also, and more important, to give readers an insight into the lives of migrant farmworker families from the past and the present whose hard and noble work of picking fruits and vegetables puts food on our tables. What sustains these families, toiling day after day, are their courage, faith, and hopes and dreams for a better life for their children and their children's children. Their story is an integral part of the American story." As Francisco states, he hopes The Circuit will help people understand immigrants and create empathy and respect for them.

The illustrations in the graphic memoir capture these facets of Francisco's story and make his story engaging and easy to follow. Illustrator Celia Jacobs used pen and ink on watercolor paper with digital colour. Additional artwork was painted with acrylic on paper.

Book Details:

The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez
New York: Clarion Books     2024
233 pp.

The Girl Who Fought Back: Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Joshua M. Greene

Feige Peltel, known by her code name of Vladka, is headed towards Warsaw's wealthier district, hoping to sell ribbons, spools of thread and other sewing goods. Vladka's light brown hair and grey-green eyes, and the fact that she spoke fluent Polish suggests that she is a non-Jew. 

It is November 1939, two months since the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Jews now face unending restrictions. Jews comprised almost thirty percent of Warsaw's one million residents. But now Vladka's family, like other Jews have surrendered their bicycles and radios, and can only shop during specific hours. Vladka, like other Jewish children no longer attend school and she found her Christian friends suddenly anti-Semitic and willing to report any Jews attempting to hide their identity.

After selling some sewing supplies in Saski Park, Vladka returned to her family's apartment in the suburb of Praga. She lived with her parents, Shlomo and Hanna,  her sister Henia and her thirteen-year-old brother, Chaim. Her father who had served in the First World War believed the Germans were good people who would not treat the Jews the way Hitler was telling them to.

In the summer of 1940, Jewish workers were forced by German officials to build a ten foot high brick wall around an area that was roughly one square mile. This became the Jewish ghetto. When the wall was completed in November, the Jews of Warsaw were all forced to move from their homes into the ghetto. The ghetto was soon filled with hundreds of thousands of Jews crammed into crumbling buildings. Germans guarded the entrance to the ghetto. As Vladka walked through the ghetto, "...she saw people young and old, emaciated and dying of starvation." 

Vladka found work as a cashier in a barber shop, while Henia worked in a public soup kitchen.Chaim was too young to work so he helped their mother at home. Vladka's father had tried to sell cloth from his business but he was beaten and robbed by the German police. He became depressed and then ill, contracting pneumonia. His illness and hunger took it's toll and he slowly died. Vladka and her family struggled to survive in the ghetto. There were reports of Jews being sent to concentration camps by train, where they were murdered.

In July 1942, the Germans announced that all Jews in the ghetto would be deported. The exception was those employed in the German workshops and in various Jewish organizations. While Henia and Vladka had work permits, her brother and mother did not. So Vladka hid them in the cellar of the soup kitchen where Henia worked. After the deportations, her mother and brother returned to their apartment. At this time Vladka lived in a separate apartment from her family in the same building. But the next morning, a second deportation began. Vladka along with the remaining Jews in her building was forced out into the street. Those with acceptable work permits were sent to the right, while those in the line on the left were to be deported. Afterwards, Vladka found her mother's apartment empty. Vladka wept because she knew she would never see her mother or brother again.

In her grief, Vladka wondered what she should do next. She joined the underground with other young people who had survived. There were smaller groups under the direction of a larger group called the Jewish Fighting Organization, in Polish, the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB. These groups helped other Jews. At first Vladka helped other Jews learn to find food and clothing or find information about missing family members. But her duties became more dangerous with time.

Vladka had a work permit for the Toebbens factory to keep her safe from deportation. Henia's job however, did not offer that protection so Vladka pleaded with her to come to her apartment overnight. However, Henia refused to abandon the children at the soup kitchen. The next day the kitchen was raided by the Germans and Vladka never saw Henia again.

As Vladka struggled with her grief, she became more involved in the underground. More and more Jews - over sixty thousand during the week of September 6 to 12, 1942, were deported from the Warsaw ghetto. In the fall of 1942, over "...265,00 Jews had been sent by train to the Treblinka death camp."  An old friend, Elie Lindner, had escaped Treblinka and returned to the ghetto. He told Vladka and her roommates about the horrors happening at Treblinka. But when her friend Kubu was deported, Vladka was inspired by Kuba's word "It's not over yet." and decided to fight back. That fight involved working to bring about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the only significant resistance of the Jewish people during World War II.

Discussion

The Girl Who Fought Back tells the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising from the perspective of Vladka Meed, a member of the Jewish resistance who survived the uprising and Holocaust.

Vladka Meed, whose given name was Feigele Peltel, was born in 1921 in Warsaw to Shlomo and Hanna Peltel. She would be the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. Because  she had what was considered an "Aryan" appearance, and she was fluent in Polish, Vladka was given assignments that were outside the Warsaw ghetto. She was able to pass as a Christian woman for the main purpose of securing weapons for the ZOB. But she also was involved in rescuing Jewish children and placing them with Christian families and in aiding Jews in hiding within the city of Warsaw. 

Greene's account is factual, focusing on the events happening to Vladka, her family and her fellow Jews. However, The Girl Who Fought Back also manages to convey some of the intense emotions Vladka was experiencing as her family suffered through the Holocaust. The fear of being deported to camps was constant as Vladka and her family knew the trains were taking Jews to their deaths. Even the best of plans couldn't save loved ones. The relief of saving her mother and brother from one deportation, only to have them placed on a second surprise deportation was quickly replaced by intense grief. When Vladka races back to her mother's apartment only to find it empty, she weeps because she knows she will never see them again. The inability to convince her sister Henia to hide at her apartment, only to learn later that she too is taken, makes Vladka feel angry at herself for being unable to convince Henia to save herself.

Other times, such as witnessing the cold blooded murder of an elderly woman walking, by an German soldier, Vladka simply doesn't react because there is nothing she can do. When she saw the cruelty of the Germans, she struggled to make sense of what she was witnessing. It was as incomprehensible then as it is now.

Vladka's continued survival, despite ongoing deportations, created a deep sense of loss, but also conflict. She wonders, "Why had she not also been deported? Why was she still alive and not them?" She like many of the survivors experienced "...a loss of hope over their fate at the hands of the Nazis."  Her increasing involvement in the resistance gave Vladka a purpose despite her knowing that the odds of dying were very high. 

When Vladka finds herself in relative safety outside the ghetto as the battle begins, she is "furious at herself" but also feels pride and frustration. She could only watch and wait.  "Vladka was one of a small group of Jews who had done everything in their power to fight the Nazis. It was a battle they knew could not be won, and now, watching atrocity after atrocity, she felt isolated, useless, and lonely. Her friends and family had been murdered, the world she once knew was gone forever, and nothing she could do would every bring it back."  Despite this, the words of ZOB Commander Mordecai Anielewicz inspired Vladka to go on, and to someday "tell the story of those who hadn't survived."

Vladka published her memoir in 1948, describing not just the horrors of the Holocaust and her experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto but also the rich life of the Jewish people prior to the war. She felt it was difficult for historians and scholars to understand what the Holocaust survivors had endured. Likewise she felt her own efforts to resist were also misunderstood. "We didn't think of ourselves as heroes. We didn't have a choice. We were doing what needed to be done, responding to what the Germans were doing to us." She felt that being seen as a hero was "...seeing with today's eyes."

The Girl Who Fought Back is a succinct retelling of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that succeeds in portraying the desperation, determination, courage, and resourcefulness of  Vladka Meed. The last three chapters focus on the post war period and how Vladka continued her work to tell the world about the uprising but also to teach future generations about the Jewish people and to prevent the hatred and indifference that led to the Holocaust.

Book Details:

The Girl Who Fought Back: Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Joshua M. Greene

New York: Scholastic Focus    2024

142 pp.

The Bard and The Book by Ann Bausum

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He came to be known as the Bard of Avon, or the poet from Avon. But his fame was made in London. While he worked in London, first as an actor and later as a playwright, his wife Anne and their children remained in Avon. He was also a business partner in a new theater called the Globe which competed with others like the Rose, the Curtain, and the Swan.

Shakespeare was one of many London playwrights that included Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and John Fletcher. From 1585 to 1613, Shakespeare wrote three dozen plays including comedies, tragedies, and histories. The latter were about the English nobility and kept Shakespeare and his company of actors in favour with the English Crown. They became known as the King's Men.

To write his plays, Shakespeare used paper ink and quill pens. Although none of his original manuscripts called foul papers have survived, he plays did. It was due to theatrical scribes like Ralph Crane who transcribed the foul copies into legible copies of the playwright's original text. Each players lines were written down glued together and rolled up into a bundle for each part. These rolls came to be known as the acting role referred to today.

Many of the famous roles in Shakespeare's plays were first acted by Richard Burbage. Shakespeare wrote his characters with this actor in mind. He first portrayed Hamlet, King Lear, and the hunchbacked King Richard III. Burbage was one of the King's Men and Shakespeare trusted him to bring his characters to life. All the actors in Shakespeare's time were men; female roles were played by teenage boys or young men. 

Shakespeare returned to Avon in 1610 likely to spend time with his family. His exact date of death and the cause, is not known for certain but it is known that he was buried on April 25, 1616. 

In Shakespeare's time, "The lines of a play lived in the memories of the people who performed and watched them." The plays were written to be performed not published. And publishers did not need the playwright's permission to publish as theaters owned the scripts. However, eighteen of Shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime as thin books called quartos. The quarto was a sheet of folded twice to make eight pages. Some of these were accurately transcribed editions, others were not and came to be known as the bad quartos.

With Shakespeare's death in 1616 and Richard Burbage's death in 1619, it would be expected that Shakespeare's plays would vanish, forgotten over time. That they did not was due to the big idea that one person Ben Johnson had: he published a book of his own poems and plays. While critics took him to task for this, other publishers had the idea to publish the entire plays of Shakespeare. And they would do it by publishing a much bigger book, the folio.

Discussion

The Bard And The Book explains how William Shakespeare's plays were saved from oblivion and passed down through the centuries to be read, studied and performed and enjoyed.

After a brief introduction to Shakespeare and his company, Bausum dives right into how early books were published in 17th century England, explaining quartos, octavos, and folios. A folio-sized sheet of paper was eighteen inches wide and fourteen inches tall. Folded in half it produced four pages in a book. When multiple sheets were folded in this way, they could be nested inside one another and sewn along the fold to create a book. In this way, the publishers created a folio of Shakespeare's works. 

As Bausum explains, using the fourteen good quartos, prompt books, the rolls, the foul papers, and possibly Ralph Crane who had copied so many of Shakespeare's plays, it was possible to assemble the plays and print them. Bausum goes on to explain whether pages were numbered using a process called signatures, how publishers assembled the books without using pagination, and how books were typeset in the 1600's using compositors. The first printing of Shakespeare's plays in 1623 has come to be known as the First Folios.

Once the First Folios were printed, who purchased them? The author explores the history of the original edition of Shakespeare's plays, including who purchased the very first copy and the unique names and characteristics of each copy. The First Folio is considered the most authentic edition because it was printed by people who knew Shakespeare. The Second Folio was published in 1632, the Third Folio in 1663 and the coveted Fourth Folio in 1685.

One interesting feature of The Bard And The Book is the hunt undertaken by literary scholars for the individual copies of the First Folio. The quest to locate any surviving copies of the First Folio really began in 1902 by British scholar, Sidney Lee. This treasure hunt, over the last century, by various researchers, has revealed two hundred thirty-five copies of the book! Many have very distinctive characteristics.

The Bard And The Book is a fascinating read that provides many interesting facts as to how books began to be published and how we now have copies of all of Shakespeare's works. Bausum's writing is informative and easy to understand with clear explanations and touch of wit. The author was inspired to research and learn more about the First Folios after being introduced to the story by the playwright Lauren Gunderson. There is also an interesting section titled, The Making of This Book which will show just how differently books are made today compared to the 1600s! There is a list of Citations From The Plays of William Shakespeare, Source Notes, Bibliography and Additional Resources for further research.

Bausum has incorporated several photographs of the Folios within her text. It's interesting to note that when she was able to actually inspect a real Folio, she wasn't required to wear protective gloves as they were considered to be more damaging than bare hands. There are red, blue and white digital illustrations by Marta Sevilla. The illustrator employed gouache and coloured pencils for the cover. The author has divided her book into five Acts, with quotes from Shakespeare's plays featured prominently. Also included is a list of Contents of The First Folio with the author noting which plays had not been previously published and therefore would have been lost to history if not included. 

The Bard And The Book adds wonderful background information to the life and works of William Shakespeare, explaining how we owe a debt to just a few forward thinking men who preserved his works for future generations of readers and actors alike.

Book Details:

The Bard And The Book by Ann Bausum
Atlanta, Georgia: Peachtree Publishing Company Inc.    2024
103 pp.

The Monarch Effect: Surviving Poison, Predators, and People by Dana L. Church

The Monarch Effect presents the remarkable story of the monarch butterfly and how we came to learn so much about this fascinating insect.

The story begins in Chapter One Baby Monarchs and Barfing Blue Jays with the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, starting with the tiny caterpillar which hatches out of a very small egg on the underside of a milkweed plant. The complex relationship between the monarch caterpillar which requires the milkweed plant to survive and the milkweed plant which needs to protect its leaves is described. Key to this relationship are the many survival strategies the monarch caterpillar has developed. These include how to circumvent the tiny spiky hairs on the milkweed leaf and the toxic white oozing liquid of the plant which also acts as a glue. There are several types of milkweed plants and the monarch caterpillars have developed strategies to survive on each. 

Each stage of the monarch caterpillar's life from its five molts to the preparations it makes to pupate, where it forms a chrysalis and undergoes metamorphosis to a butterfly are described with many interesting details.

The research of Dr. Fred Urquhart and his wife Norah are the focus of Chapter Two. Where Do They Go? Urquhart's interest in monarchs began as a boy and carried on through the rest of his life. Dr. Fred Urquhart had plenty of questions about monarch butterflies: Where do monarchs go for the winter? Do they have somewhere safe and warm to rest or do they die off? One article Fred read suggested that monarchs overwinter in Canada and the Northern United States. But he could find no evidence of this. Dr. C.B. Williams, a scientist in England, suggested "...that monarchs fly down to the Gulf Coast in Florida to overwinter and return in the spring."  In 1935, Dr. Urquhart began to investigate this theory by tagging monarch butterflies.

Eventually the Urquharts were able to develop a successful way to tag monarchs and enlist the help of volunteers across North America. They formed the Insect Migration Association and created an annual newsletter. The tagging program showed that the monarchs' flight paths began in northeast Canada and ended along the US Gulf Coast and in Texas. 

In Chapter Three More To The Story, the hard work and determination of Kenneth Brugger and a Mexican woman, Catalina Trail would provide the answer as to where the monarchs overwinter. Their work to determine the overwintering location was crucial to Fred and Norah's research. The Urquharts did not know where the monarchs travelled after they left Texas and the Gulf area. Trail and Brugger would discover two overwintering sites: Cerro Pelon and Sierra Chincua.

What followed was controversy and rivalry after Fred Urquhart published a fourteen-page article in the August 1976 issue of National Geographic magazine. The article paid only a passing mention of the work of Brugger and Trail and failed to honor the promise to keep the overwintering sites completely secret. The reality was that the Urquharts didn't "discover" the overwintering sites as it's likely the Indigenous and local people of Cerro Pelon already knew of them. After all, they cared for the forests and lived on the land.

Urquhart's article did create intense public interest from both scientists and citizens. One person deeply interested was Dr. Lincoln Brower.  In Chapter Four Squabbling Scientists, the relationship between Brower and the Urquharts is explored. What started on friendly terms quickly became a bitter rivalry as the Urquharts refused to share the location of the overwintering sites. Brower had developed a unique method of fingerprinting monarch butterflies using the cardenolide they ingested from the milkweed plants. Milkweed contains a poison in its roots, leaves, milk, seeds and nectar called cardenolides. This fingerprint  allowed scientists to determine where the monarchs had originated based on the  type of milkweed they had ingested. 

Even after the publication of the National Geographic article, the Urquharts would not reveal the location, so Brower took matters into his own hands. He used clues from the article to help: "The overwintering colony...was located on the slope of a volcanic mountain situated in the northern part of the State of Michoacan, Mexico, at a height of slightly over 3000 m." With the help of a fellow scientist, Dr. William Culvert, and topographic maps, Brower located the Sierra Chincua site. Incredibly, Brower and Culvert encountered the Urquharts at the site and an unfortunate accident that resulted in the deaths of millions of monarchs did not improve the situation. Perhaps one of Brower's most significant contributions to monarch butterfly science was the system of cardenolide "fingerprinting" he developed, which allowing researchers to determine a monarch butterfly's location of origin.

Dr. Brower and his team's research is explored in detail in Chapter Five Secrets of the Forest. Brower's research considerably expanded our knowledge "...about monarch butterflies, their predators, and the special climate of the Mexican overwintering sites." They demonstrated that importance of the oyamel forests in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt to monarch butterfly survival. His research uncovered how the monarch migration northward to Canada works. They revealed that  ",,,successive generations of monarchs lay eggs farther and farther north until they reach southern Canada." 

Chapter Six Tracking Migration, explores scientists efforts to better understand monarch migration focusing on the pace of migration and the factors that might be affecting migration. This chapter also explores research into two models, the milkweed limitation hypothesis and the migration mortality hypothesis as reasons for the decline in monarch population.

As research into monarchs expanded, scientists realized they needed to be studying more than just monarch migration, In Chapter Seven, Tracking More Than Migration, the work of several scientists including Dr. Kelsey Fisher and Dr. Karen Oberhauser is featured. Oberhauser initiated studies on monarch egg counts while Fisher, who studied movement ecology, wanted to understand how monarchs find milkweed plants, how they locate the Mexican overwintering sites for the first time and how monarchs know it's spring and time to head north again.

Chapter Eight, Monarch "Smarts" explores in greater detail the science behind monarch migration. Scientists wanted to discover how an insect with a such a tiny brain knows to fly three thousand miles south to an area approximately seventy-three miles wide. In order to understand this, researchers needed to understand monarch biology: researchers studied how their antennae functioned, the chemoreceptors and mechanoreceptors that monarchs relied on, how their eyes work and much more.

Chapter Nine Monarchs Around The World, asks the question "Where did monarch butterflies come from?" To answer this question, the fossil record is considered and genomics, the study of genes has been used to try to answer this question. This chapter also explores where other populations of monarchs are found in the world. 

The significant decline of the western monarch population which is located west of the Rocky Mountains is explored in Chapter Ten Monarch Emergencies. This population spends spring and summer in Nevada, Idaho and Oregon and overwinters along the coast of California. The chapter also considers the decline in the eastern monarch migration. 

In Chapter Eleven Living Near The Monarchy, the efforts to protect the habitat of overwintering monarchs is discussed. The work of Dr. Columba Gonzalez-Duarte has focused on evaluating the Monarch Biosphere conservation model and found it wanting. This model has led to the unintended loss of the traditional way of life for local Mexicans living on the lands and have also led to the proliferation of organized crime. This chapter outlines the many problems of the model both for the butterfly and forest conservation and for the people living in the ecosystem. Instead, Gonzalez-Duarte proposes focusing on the entire habitat instead of just one species might be more successful to saving both monarchs and Indigenous culture and way of life. 

Discussion

The Monarch Effect offers readers a deep dive into the world of the monarch butterfly and the research being done to understand this remarkable and beautiful insect. 

Dana Church provides her readers with fascinating information on almost every aspect of the monarch butterfly. The Monarch Effect opens with a detailed introduction of the life cycle of the butterfly that includes many interesting facts readers will likely not know. For example, many readers will know that the milkweed plant contains a poison, called cardenolide which is found in every part of the plant. But did you know it is also toxic to monarch larvae? Church writes, "Less than half of all monarch caterpillars survive the milkweed's latex...If the amount of latex a caterpillar ends up accidentally eating doesn't kill the, they can recover in five to ten minutes. Otherwise, they end up in a nonresponsive, coma-like state and die." The author describes the various survival strategies monarch caterpillars employ to survive on different species of milkweed and then goes on to describe the rest of the life cycle.

From this point on, the focus of The Monarch Effect is to present the incredible amount of research that has been done in the last eighty years on monarchs beginning with the initial monarch research in the early 20th century by Canadians, Fred and Nora Urquhart into where exactly monarchs overwintered. Like many other scientific endeavours, such research was not without controversy and to that end Church presents a balanced account of the rivalry between the Urquharts and Dr. Lincoln Brower, an American researcher who contributed significantly to our understanding of monarch butterflies. She also highlights the bias of this early research in believing it "discovered" the monarchs overwintering sites, which were already known to the Indigenous peoples of Mexico.

Throughout the book, Church highlights the many questions that arose as scientists learned more about monarchs. "...How do monarchs know when to start migrating? As they migrate, do they fly at a steady speed along the entire journey, or do they speed up or slow down at certain points?" How does weather impact monarch migration? Does the angle of the sun affect the migration? Other researchers wanted to know which US states monarchs arrived at first in the spring. When does the spring migration begin? Why does the timing and duration vary each spring? When the monarchs arrive in Mexico how do they choose where to roost? Do the same butterflies always roost together? How do monarchs locate milkweed plants? How do they decide on which plant to lay their eggs? As Church demonstrates, each piece of information led to more and more questions and required researchers to devise unique ways to find the answers. 

Several chapters are devoted to answering questions about the decline of monarchs and how we can best help the species recover. As with many environmental issues, the problems are complex and multi-faceted. Scientists are now advocating for a combined approach that utilizes both Indigenous and Western traditional science knowledge. It is an approach that considers not just monarchs, but the entire ecosystem and habitat, one that better integrates humans with the natural world they are a part of. This will require removing bias and require international cooperation to succeed.

The Monarch Effect is engaging and informative, written in an easy style, with understandable explanations about the complex problems facing monarch butterflies and the communities they are a part of.  The eastern monarch spans three countries, vastly different ecosystems, and different cultures. The author encourages her readers to become involved in the monarch butterfly recovery efforts by sending monarch sightings to Journey North, helping with tagging monarchs at monarchwatch.org and even counting monarch eggs and larvae through Monarch Joint Venture. The book offers websites that citizen scientists can access to become a part of this important work.

The Monarch Effect is perfect for the budding entomologist and those interested in the natural world. Church includes a detailed Glossary and an extensive References list at the back to help with further research and reading. 

Book Details:

The Monarch Effect: Surviving Poison, Predators, and People by Dana L. Church
New York: Focus Scholastics     2024
309 pp.