I was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1954, and continue to make my home there.
As a child, I took lots of lessons, attended after school language classes and Sunday School, did all my homework and practicing, but still had lots of time left over to go to the ravine at the end of the street with my friends. We would disappear for hours, coming home only to eat. We’d get soakers in the river, fall in the mud, and get scraped by the branches of the trees we were climbing. We’d come home and clean ourselves up. Our parents didn’t worry about the dangers, not mine, anyway.
University was challenging, especially graduate school. Long bike rides and time spent at the conservation areas were great stress relievers, and cleared my head for the school work that needed to be done. Fun, relaxing, stimulating, fit…. I could still get it all from a trip into nature. My boyfriend taught me to look for caterpillars. We got married. We have been raising monarchs for more than forty years, albeit it in separate houses in recent times.
When the kids were young, caterpillar hunting was a favourite family activity at the cottage. We would celebrate every discovery; it felt like finding money. We would revel at every stage of growth. When the butterfly emerged, we would grab every cottager that passed by to show off our baby, then we would take a few photos. Just a few, because they were expensive.
The advent of digital photography allowed me to take thousands of photos of monarchs at every stage of their development, and
some of them turned out great. My friends, on seeing them, basically twisted my arm to write a book. In 2010, with no experience or training in writing, I tackled the job. I wrote How to Raise Monarch Butterflies A Step-by-Step Guide for Kids, for kids of all ages, with humour and stories. The professional editors made it sing. My passion for monarchs, photography, and conservation, as detailed in the book, is now widely accessible in bookstores, parks, butterfly conservatories, science and nature shops, and libraries. With more than a thousand 5 Star reviews and 60 thousand copies sold, it has become the textbook for anyone starting out in the best summer hobby ever.
In 2020, I was asked by another mainstream publisher to write a book on other butterflies. 
While covering the life cycle of 4 common butterflies, and a moth, its message for young people is to pause their devices, and get out of the house to explore. 5 Butterflies includes stories and issues never before covered in a book, while still being light, entertaining, and visually exciting.
Raising butterflies is an excellent Introduction to Nature project for families, classrooms and youth groups. It starts with a hunt for caterpillars, and ends with the release of a miracle less than a month later. All sorts of discoveries abound along the way, while happy memories of friends and family expeditions are created.
It is my hope that the raising of butterflies will be your gateway into the natural world around you, and that by loving it, you will preserve it. Discover it. Love it. Protect it.
Carol Pasternak, LLb, MBA, CPT, and now…..
The Monarch Crusader
