“If you were a caterpillar, you’d inch over milkweed, munching, stripes blending in with shadows and stems … You’d button yourself to a leaf, molt one last time, and wriggle into a blue-green chrysalis. After a while … you’d be a monarch butterfly … ” A second-person narrative puts young children right at the center of this wonderfully crafted story even as it conveys a wealth of information about other living things in the natural world. In addition to the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, “you” is imagined as an acorn becoming an oak, a tadpole becoming a leopard frog, a hatchling becoming a painted turtle, a duckling becoming a mallard, and a fawn becoming a white-tailed deer. Digital illustrations incorporating hand-painted textures show diverse children and their adult caregivers, each child observing a different one of the featured species. The story comes full circle in its final pages, focusing on “you,” who has grown from a baby “snug in a blanket” to a child who can “splash in the shallows like turtles and ducks, search for an acorn, a tadpole, a butterfly, leave your dear footprints wherever you go.” (Ages 2-5)