Crystal Ball O'Connor ’78: Her Metamorphosis Into an Author & Environmental Conservationist
by Emma Watson

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Wearing her butterfly wings, Crystal Ball O'Connor reads
from her book, Jake and the Migration of the Monarch,
to an audience of young listeners.


Walk into any Barnes and Noble or local bookstore in the Southeast and you’ll likely find Dr. Crystal Ball O’Connor. She’ll be in the children’s book section—you’ll find her book, Jake and the Migration of the Monarch, on the Featured Selections shelf beside some familiar old favorites. You might even be lucky enough to find Crystal herself, dressed in her monarch butterfly wings and enchanting a group of children, parents, grandparents, and others who couldn’t resist her heart-warming story of Jake and his mother as they watch a glorious migration of monarch butterflies on the South Carolina coast.

Jake’s mother tells him, “Just as your parents and grandparents help set the path for you, the butterflies do the same thing.” Together they celebrate their connection to one another, family, and nature as the monarch travelers flutter by on their path toward home.

Dr. O’Connor completed her doctorate in Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, is the former Director of the Georgia Council on Aging, and is currently serving her eighth year as a Trustee on the Greenville County School Board. Crystal lives in Greenville with her husband Jim and their three children.

Combining her many roles in family and community, Crystal has written and published her first children’s book, Jake and the Migration of the Monarch. This beautifully told book, with illustrations by portrait artist and fellow School Board Trustee Valerie Hollinger, fulfills Crystal’s goal to “help children preserve and protect the gifts of nature, family, and literacy.”


Illustrator Hollinger created the cover art from an actual photo of Crystal's son Jake.

Author O’Connor and illustrator Hollinger became publishers when they established their own company, Monarch Publishers, to provide the quick response they needed to get the book ready for distribution. And what a reception the book received. In more than 100 visits to bookstores, schools, and teacher conferences the response was so enthusiastic to the message of this environmentally conscious book that the first printing of 5,000 copies was exhausted in less than a year. Wanting to offer resources beyond the book itself, Crystal established a website, crystal@monarchpublishers.com , to provide not only resources and activities for children and families, but also well-researched connections to school curriculum requirements. Praise for this approach has come in from many quarters.

According to the Education Institute at the North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, “The thorough and practical curriculum, integrating materials that accompany the book on CD and on the website, help to ensure that it’s not only good reading, but that teachers have well-prepared resource tools thatthey can use to help their students meet curriculum requirements in multiple subject areas.” To develop these curricular activities, Crystal enlisted the aid of teacher experts in the various disciplines. Sharon Kazee, Dean of the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and former CCES music teacher, coordinated the effort, and personally developed the outstanding teaching activities in the performing arts.

The Charleston Post and Courier hailed the book for furthering the concept of “extending learning” beyond the school walls and making “this concept readily available to families.” Not only did the book receive a positive response, the website won the prestigious national Award of Excellence from Teacher’s Corner.

Back to the butterfly-winged Dr. O’Connor. In an engaging voice Crystal invites children and their families to involve themselves in the critical conservation message: you can help save the monarchs, the milkweed plant that hosts the butterflies, and the fir tree forests in Mexico.

(A packet of milkweed seeds accompanies the special gift set to give children an opportunity to do something active; the gift set includes the seeds, a Monarch butterfly finger puppet, and a photo of the cocoon, all wrapped in Monarch butterfly paper.)

As Ms. Kazee recently told The Greenville News, “They have this great story that’s about so much more than butterflies. It can be about families; it can be about coming home; it can be about reading with your children.” And it is about giving children the chance to feel connected to geography, science, music, dance, and conservation activities that they can do themselves.

In fact, the value of these enriched connections to home, school, and world community were recently recognized when Dr. O’Connor’s Monarch Publishers was honored with a Hollingsworth Grant of $25,000 to provide the book and educational enrichment activities for disadvantaged children and their families. Over the next several months more than 1,400 families will receive the book, participate in related early literacy activities, and have the opportunity to work directly with the author and illustrator. More than 100 families will receive the Spanish edition of her book.

Crystal is serious about her work with Jake and the Migration of the Monarch. Her business card is a package of milkweed seeds, the food monarchs must have to survive because it protects them against predators. Crystal enjoys most working with students and teachers to demonstrate the value of the arts in engaging young learners. O’Connor and Hollinger have made their own “migration” to a variety of East Coast audiences, mesmerizing students and adults alike with their Musical Migration Adventure.

Visit the website and fi nd yourself exploring the multiple connections to high-quality conservation activities as well as music, geography, science, math, and reading. You’ll learn, too, that Jake and the Migration of the Monarch has been selected as a “Highly Recommended Book” by the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. “This heartfelt dialogue between mother and child models attentive parenting while also revealing the wonders of the natural world. A superb choice for family reading,” wrote Alida Allison, reviewer for the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature (NCSCL).

Or, you may be lucky enough to catch Crystal at your local bookstore wearing her monarch wings and telling her story to yet another gathering of families who find themselves invited to join others in preserving “the gifts of nature, family, and literacy.”

If you’d like to contact Crystal Ball O’Connor, or if you would like to receive a personalized copy of her book, please e-mail her through her website at crystal@monarchpublishers.com.

Author's Note:

Emmie Watson taught junior English at CCES from 1974-78 and received her M. Ed. from Furman University before she “retired” to raise her newborn son (and daughter three years later). At present, Ms. Watson teaches senior English at Eastside High School where she has taught for the last thirteen years, served on the school district Education Plan Committee, the District Teacher Evaluation Writing Committee, and the District Arts Standards Committee. A Bread Loaf Fellow at the Middlebury College graduate school of English, Ms. Watson will receive her MA in August 2006 from the Bread Loaf School of English at Oxford University where she has been studying for three summers.

On a personal note, Ms. Watson writes, “I have had the extraordinary pleasure of working with Crystal on the Greenville County School District Education Plan for several years. We have remained friends since I was her teacher at CCES. When she asked me to read and then edit her delightful book, I couldn’t wait to begin. The journey has been one of respect and admiration for this talented and brilliant young woman.”