‘Ned the Nearsighted Butterfly’ emerges from Arkansas chrysalis

(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Celia Storey)
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Celia Storey)

This is Ned. He is a butterfly. He is also nearsighted.

And this is Ned's story as written by David Monteith and illustrated by Nikki Dawes in the new children's book Ned the Nearsighted Butterfly.

It's a clever, heartwarming legend set in a fictional past that tells how, by Ned's unwitting example, the gentle, colorful insects learned how to fly.

It's also the debut children's book by Monteith and the first book Dawes, a former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette graphic artist, has illustrated.

Ned the Nearsighted Butterfly, available for $18.99 at Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, is a self-published chapter book and opens in a fictional time long ago when butterflies had no natural enemies and could barely fly. A seemingly endless and brutally hot summer is making the world a much harsher place, though. Birds are preying on butterflies, and life has become a perilous dance to avoid becoming a crow's lunch.

The weather has finally turned cooler, and under the supervision of butterflies named Stern and Gram, a small group of butterflies, including Ned, are slowly traveling south and trying to avoid detection by the ever-present birds.

At one point, Ned spots another butterfly and tries to follow her across a field, which is where we need to stop for fear of revealing spoilers. Suffice to say, there is a sweet little twist that inspired an audible "awwwwwww" on our first reading.

Monteith, 50, a former middle school and high school math teacher (in San Antonio), lives in Little Rock and is a reporter for public radio station KUAR-FM, 89.1. He also teaches yoga and makes jewelry out of comic-book word bubbles.

Dawes, 35, is a freelance artist from Sherwood whose regular work tends toward figurative imaginative realism.

Here they are speaking about Ned and its origins over lunch earlier this month at Three Fold Noodles and Dumpling Co.:

"I wrote the story maybe five years ago," Monteith says. "I approached some local artists and had more than one agree to illustrate it, but then they would back out."

He was familiar with Dawes' work through Instagram and in 2018 sent her text of Ned and another story he had written.

"I've had lots of people approach me about illustrating their books," says Dawes who also designed the book. "And they send me really weird, unpolished stuff."

Monteith's stories arrived fully formed and quickly connected with her.

"I thought: 'Oh, this is different. This is something else,' and I got really excited," she says. The anthropomorphic butterflies she created have orange wings and bright eyes; an early close-up of nearsighted Ned shows the little fella full of wonder.

Reading Ned, she says, she could "understand their feelings of desperation and understand that Ned, being the odd dude out with his visual impairment, is just trying to do the best that he can do. He has a different perspective on the world, and I think a lot of us feel that way."

"I didn't start out with a mission to write this story," Monteith says. "The idea just came, and it ended up coming to fruition. A lot of them don't."

Dawes compares it to a Pixar short film. "It's this cute, short, perfect little tale," she says. "It's such an endearing story."

Monteith says the hardback book, which is 55 pages long and has eight chapters, uses a vocabulary level appropriate for children between 8 and 11 years old.

He didn't shy away from bigger words like murmuration, cacophony and feigning, the definitions of which are included in a handy glossary.

"David understood that you don't have to dumb things down for children," says Dawes, who has worked as a nanny and taught at North Little Rock Montessori School. "Children will rise to your expectations."

Dawes, who contributed illustrations to the forthcoming Dungeons and Dragons campaign book Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, says she had difficulty getting a handle on how best to illustrate Ned, especially the backgrounds. Her early efforts tended to be bright and had more detail. She and Monteith were still learning to communicate with each other about what they wanted for the book.

One word changed all of that.

"The story is very dark at the beginning," Monteith says. "I wanted that dark style, but I didn't know how to express that."

He told Dawes to think of it as "bleak," which made it all click for her and allowed her to simplify her images.

"Once he said 'bleak,' I was like, 'I can do that,'" she says. "Their world was scary for a time, so the backgrounds are very sparse. It's this blue and white world except for the end when it gets happier."

Her illustrations serve the story well. As with Monteith's text, they give the reader just enough information to keep the tale moving.

So. That other story Monteith sent in 2018? It's about a bird who loses her voice.

"I'm still trying to talk somebody into illustrating it," he says, looking at Dawes before they both start laughing.

Style on 02/17/2020

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