BOOK NOOK synopsis

LOGLINE

Zig Zag the Worm and Wooly Bear the Caterpillar get better with time like fine literature. 

PITCH

When Wooly Bear the Caterpillar has to enter a cocoon to become Monarch the Butterfly in a French castle among many books, his friend Zig Zag the Worm stands by waiting for his transformation only to fly off into the distance together on Monarch’s new wings. 

SYNOPSIS

Zig Zag the worm, who lived in the Book Nook hidden in the corner of the library in an abandoned French castle near the Rhine River, likes to worm his way through fine literature. Although there is an entire castle to explore, Zig Zag crawls through volumes of the world’s best stories. He has become an expert in kings and queens, princesses and knights, witches and ghosts, and even fairy elves. Along with fiction, he reads theses in education, health, science, the Arts, world history, and politics. One day, a fuzzy caterpillar named Wooly Bear wiggles its way into the library and opens The Encyclopedia of Butterflies. Wooly Bear asks Zig Zag how it is possible that he will one day be a butterfly. Zig Zag puts on his reading spectacles and scrunches his nose, paging through The Encyclopedia. Zig Zag explains that it seems like he enters a cocoon as a cave or sorts, and then he emerges, coming out with brightly colored wings. All of the fuzziness on the Caterpillar’s skin stood on edge, listening to the Worm, and the Caterpillar could not even feel his body, dreading the process of becoming new. 

During the winter chill, Wooly Bear Caterpillar makes its home in The Encyclopedia of Butterflies. Despite all odds, it snuggles up against pictures of what it would one day become—a lovely butterfly. Zig Zag tells Wooly Bear he hopes to see him in the springtime, and Wooly Bear says that when he sees him to call him by his new name: Monarch the Butterfly. Wooly Bear’s cocoon grows sticky and quite uncomfortable for the Caterpillar, even when he’s not sleeping. Great magic goes on inside the cocoon, which the Worm has never read about in the pages of the Book Nook. 

The Worm talks to the cocoon, wishing he could become a butterfly, too. He is so sad that he is aging, and his skin is drying up, and he wishes he could also become new. Of course, Monarch did hear Zig Zag and didn’t want him to die. When springtime approaches, one day the owner of the castle returns for its annual spring cleaning. He tromps and stomps all throughout the Book Nook, straightening the novels and making dust clouds. The Worm hides from the dustpan, knowing that Monarch has to make it out of the cocoon before he’s squashed in the cleaning. Zig Zag pushes The Encyclopedia of Butterflies under a large red curtain by the tall window and he tries to unravel the cave-like womb, asking Monarch to come out of the cocoon now. He warns him that the owner of the deserted castle has come back and is in danger of killing the soon-to-be-butterfly. Breaking lose from the cocoon, Monarch spreads his wings in an attempt to save his own life, as well as the Worm. The beautiful orange and black butterfly swoops out of the cocoon and grabs the Worm with its wing. Zig Zag and Monarch fly off into the sunset until they find a new home, a castle with many cocoons.

Copyright 2022 Jennifer Waters