A graphic novel by Eisner winner Jonathan Case
A Best Book of 2022
NPR — Booklist — School Library Journal — Kirkus Reviews — Newsarama — The New York, San Francisco, and Seattle Public Libraries
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
5 Starred Reviews from Horn Book, Booklist, Shelf Awareness, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review
“Superbly written and illustrated; keeps readers breathless and guessing until the end.” — Kirkus Starred Review
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Purchase at Bookshop, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Signed copies available here.
New fair trade Adventure Satchels are here!
Custom designed and produced by Meridian Lee!
Satchels come personalized with your loved one's name, a signed copy of Little Monarchs, drawing and watercolor pens, a magnifying class, a quality sketchbook, and a packet of milkweed seeds native to your U.S. address.
I created Little Monarchs as an imaginative invitation for kids and families into the outdoors, and these satchels are an extension of that same idea.
THE STORY
It’s been fifty years since a sun shift wiped out nearly all mammal life across the earth.
Towns and cities are abandoned relics, autonomous machines maintain roadways, and the world is slowly being reclaimed by nature. Isolated pockets of survivors keep to themselves in underground sites, hiding from the lethal sunlight by day and coming above ground at night.
10-year-old Elvie and her caretaker, Flora, a biologist, are the only two humans who can survive during daylight because Flora made an incredible discovery – a way to make an antidote to sun sickness using the scales from monarch butterfly wings. Unfortunately, it can only be made in small quantities and has a short shelf life.
Free to travel during the day, Elvie and Flora follow monarchs as they migrate across the former Western United States, constantly making new medicine for themselves while trying to find a way to make a vaccine they can share with everyone. Will they discover a way to go from a treatment to a cure and preserve what remains of humanity, or will their efforts be thwarted by disaster and the very people they are trying to save?
Little Monarchs is a new kind of graphic novel adventure—one that invites readers to take an intimate look at the natural world and the secrets hidden within. Elvie and Flora’s adventures take place in real locations marked panel-by-panel with coordinates and a compass heading. Curious readers can follow their travel routes and see the same landscapes—whether it be a secluded butterfly grove on the California coast or a hot-springs in the high desert. Through both comic narrative and journal entries, readers learn the basics of star navigation, how to tie useful knots, and other survival skills applicable in the natural world.
Creator Jonathan Case acquired the fact-based portion of Little Monarchs through intensive research and several expeditions to study monarchs across the western United States. Scientific support also came from the Xerces Society, the world leaders in monarch preservation.
Praise
★ “For a postapocalyptic survival struggle, Little Monarchs is nothing short of a romp, vibrant with a sense of exploration, adventure, and discovery … Case exalts science and its meticulous application and brings it to life through Elvie’s journal … and the painterly, nuanced palette supports the story’s measured complexity … ”—Booklist, Starred Review
★ “The eclecticism of Case’s lively visuals in this riveting graphic novel will keep readers both enthralled and learning. The book teaches some astronomy, botany, biology, entomology, animal science, knot tying, and more. Elvie’s special relationship with Flora, along with her quick wit, scientific knowledge, and careful observation skills, makes her a character worth following. Yet she’s all kid … Superbly written and illustrated; keeps readers breathless and guessing until the end.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
★ “A gripping and action-packed tale.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
★ “Prescient, thrilling, unusual and occasionally hilarious. Save the planet--read this book!” — Shelf Awareness, Starred Review.
★ “Spectacular cartooning, meticulous world-building, and an arresting post-apocalyptic premise.” — The Horn Book, Starred Review
"A masterfully-painted, pitch-perfect balance between tension and tenderness, Little Monarchs is all I want comics to be."—Vera Brosgol, Caldecott Honoree for Leave Me Alone, Eisner winner for Anya's Ghost
“Little Monarchs is gorgeous in every way … An amazingly generous work.” — Pat McHale, Emmy Award-winning creator of Over the Garden Wall & writer/director for Adventure Time
Be Part of the Little Monarchs Tour
In 2022, Jonathan Case and his family will travel the western United States, covering much of the territory that went into the book. The adventure rig is ready to roll, and it has a mission:
With every copy sold on tour, native milkweed seeds will be distributed so that readers can help support the monarch migration — a one-of-a-kind phenomenon that is near total collapse. In 2020, the western monarch population was down 99.9% compared to only a few decades ago.
The Little Monarchs tour will include a museum gallery show, school and library visits, outdoor pop-up signings, and kid-friendly naturalist workshops across the western United States. To inquire about being added to the western tour, please reach out here.
See tour events page and tour blog for our progress!
EVENTS CALENDAR — TOUR STARTS APRIL, 2022
A real adventure…
Each location in Little Monarchs is a real place marked by coordinates and a compass heading. Wherever the characters go, readers can literally follow along and encounter the same landmarks and pathways featured in the story: Panel by panel, step by step.
All of the art and lettering was created with traditional materials — brush, ink, and watercolor — across 256 pages.
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Jonathan Case is an Eisner award-winning cartoonist whose works include Dear Creature, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen, and The New Deal, an Amazon Best Book of the Year which was also nominated for Reuben and Harvey Awards. Since beginning his comics career in 2006, Jonathan has also worked as a muralist, drawn Batman for DC Comics, written and designed for Disney, and drawn storyboards and posters for film, tv, and video games. He lives in Silverton, Oregon, with his family.