Hope for the Flowers

Stripe is a caterpillar who grows restless with eating and crawling, certain there is more to life than the leaf he was born on. He discovers a writhing pillar of caterpillars all climbing over one another toward a top none of them can see, and he throws himself into the climb. Along the way he meets Yellow, who loves him enough to leave the pillar, and who eventually risks the strange, lonely process of spinning a cocoon. Paulus tells the story in simple words and her own hand-drawn illustrations, building a parable about the courage to step out of the crowd, trust an unseen possibility, and become what you were meant to be.