Thirteen-year-old Vilda lives with her parents and younger sister Irma in northern Sweden. Her father is Swedish and her mother is Sámi. Her Sámi grandfather lives in the same town, and recently she has become interested in learning more about this Indigenous people’s language and culture. But just as her Áddjá begins teaching her to read, write, and speak Sámi, he dies of a heart attack. That very night, Vilda gets her period for the first time.

Her changing body adds to her grief. She shuts herself off from family and friends, and especially from Irma, with whom she constantly fights. At the funeral, she notices an older Sámi boy, Samuel, who had learned to herd reindeer – a traditional Sámi activity – from her grandfather. Vilda develops a crush on this boy, who is more than four years older than she is, and messages him on social media in her beginner’s Sámi. Her crush seems increasingly fraught when she begins hanging out with a new group in her school in the absence of her best friend, Alma, who is spending summer vacation in Cyprus. Some of the boys from school egg her on, but she also strikes up a friendship with a Sámi classmate, Siri, who has recently transferred from the Indigenous school. Vilda wonders if she really can be Sámi if she only speaks Swedish and didn’t go to Sámi school. 

A confrontation between Vilda and Samuel, and then, with her sister while they’re closing their grandfather’s house, leads Vilda to face her grief and not let others define who she is. She comes to realize that the people of her mother’s generation were taught to be ashamed of their Sámi identity, which is why they only spoke Swedish, but the young people of Vilma’s generation, including Samuel and Siri, are reclaiming that heritage. 

Butterfly Heart is a powerful story of grief, and how in the darkest moments, one can learn and grow. The curiosity and pride that Vilda, Irma, Samuel, and Siri have for their Sámi identity is a point of connection for young teenage readers who are exploring their own multiple identities. Both dialogue and written messages in the Sámi language are presented in Sámi and not translated, giving readers a sense of the language as well as showing the challenges faced by a young person trying to teach herself in the absence of an adult mentor after Áddjá’s death. Sámi author Moa Backe Åstot’s second novel in translation, following the Printz Award winning Fire from the Sky, is a celebration of family ties and young people loudly and courageously standing up for who they are.

Butterfly Heart

Written by Moa Backe Åstot

Translated from Swedish by Agnes Broomé

Levine Querido, 2025

ISBN 978-1-64624-575-1

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Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

You can buy a copy of Butterfly Heart here or borrow it from a library here. Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission.Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the YA historical novel Torch (Carolrhoda Lab, 2022), winner of the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and a 2022 Booklist Editors’ Choice, and the YA verse novel Eyes Open (Carolrhoda Lab 2024), chosen by Booklist as a Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth, 2024. She wrote the picture book Ways to Play (Levine Querido, 2023), illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo, and co-authored with Zetta Elliott the middle grade verse novel Moonwalking (FSG, 2022). Her nonfiction includes a biography of Temple Grandin in the She Persisted chapter book series from Philomel and Film Makers: 15 Groundbreaking Women Directors (co-authored with Tanisia “Tee” Moore) from Chicago Review Press. She translates books for youth from Portuguese to English, including the 2023 YA graphic novel Pardalita by Joana Estrela, published by Levine Querido, which was named a Batchelder Honor Book in 2024 and the graphic novel Our Beautiful Darkness (Enchanted Lion), by the Angolan author Ondjaki, illustrated by António Jorge Gonçalves.