Angela Huston
Butterfly colors/Mariposas y colores
When Angie Huston was thinking about doing a departmental honors project she saw it as “an opportunity to set up a class that I was really interested in.” Huston also wanted to design a project which pulled together her major, English, and her Spanish minor.
In her first year at Bluffton, Huston became interested in writing fiction and she was also taking Spanish courses. For a research project, Huston explored bilingual children’s books. In her departmental honors class, Huston decided that it would be a good time to try and write her own bilingual children’s book.
That idea led to the completion of her self-published work titled “Butterfly colors/Mariposas y colores.” The story is about a young girl named Elena who lives in Mexico. One day in school, Elena learns about Monarch butterflies and their immigration habits to Mexico. Elena begins imagining the colors that the Monarch butterflies see along their journey and she imagines their trip through colors. The book ends when the butterflies return once again to Mexico.
Through her project, Huston learned a lot about the process of writing and publishing a book. Huston started with the idea of doing something with colors and butterflies. At first, she wrote the story in Spanish and then translated the text into English. From that draft, Huston went back and changed some of the words to fit the story better.
With the words in place, Huston next set to work on the illustrations. Illustrating the book herself was a new experience for Huston. “I learned how much pictures are a part of the story and how many layers are involved in each picture.”
Writing the story involved quite a bit of research. Huston read many children’s books as part of her research. She also had to gather information on Monarch butterflies such as their immigration patterns, how long their trip takes and how to tell the difference between male and female butterflies. Huston also researched landscape scenes in Mexico for her illustrations.
After using special software to put the book together, the hard work paid off as she sent the book off to be published. Huston is interested in shopping the book around to see if it gets picked up, and is also interested in writing other children’s stories in the future.
