Ruth Heller's How to Hide a Butterfly & Other Insects

Ruth Heller (1923-2004) began her career in design after earning a fine arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley and completing graduate work in design at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Her early work included designing wrapping paper, cocktail napkins, greeting cards, and coloring books.

In 1981, Heller’s first book, Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones, about egg-laying animals, was published after five years of rejection and one complete revision. Its success led to the swift publication of a sequel, Animals Born Alive And Well, in 1982, focusing on mammals. Her subsequent books, The Reason For A Flower (1983) and Plants That Never Ever Bloom (1984), explored different aspects of plant life.

Heller then embarked on the How To Hide series, a collection of six books about camouflage in the animal kingdom, covering insects, birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and sea creatures. She followed this with a five-volume series on parts of speech: A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns; Kites Sail High: A Book About Verbs; Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives; Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns; and Up, Up and Away: A Book About Adverbs. She also wrote and illustrated Color, a guide to the four-color printing process.

Notable influences on Heller’s writing included Ogden Nash, Gilbert and Sullivan, Edward Lear, Hilaire Belloc, and Dr. Seuss. Heller described her work as “nonfiction picture books in rhyme,” believing that rhyme makes learning enjoyable and accessible for children, helping them acquire new facts and sophisticated vocabulary. She aimed for succinct writing, allowing illustrations to convey significant information.

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