Butterfly Blink is a book without words. It is intended to be a learning tool for children between the ages of 2 and 6.
When Karl asked if Truth About Books would review his book, my first thought was: I’m not qualified to review a children’s book. I have no children and I’m not a teacher. However, I was a docent for the Monarch Butterfly Exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum and currently an Interpretative Volunteer at the San Diego Zoo’s Insect House. I also have two close friends, one here in San Diego and one in England, who teach special needs children in the target age range of the book. So, between the three of us, I believe we are more than qualified to review his book.
All three of us came to pretty much the same conclusions.
Without the explanation on Amazon, the intent and use of the book was confusing. We strongly suggest that the author provide an insert, or a preface page for the Kindle version, so that the books user understands how it is intended to be used.
We found the simplicity, open ended messages, mix of objects per page and whimsical quality of the objects and actions on each page to likely attract a child’s attention.
However, given the target age group, we all thought that brighter colors and less clutter on some of the pages might help better hold that child’s attention. We also all missed the blinking eyes and objects buried in the background, until our third time through. Thus, making the eyes and objects a bit more pronounced might help draw attention to them.
The teacher in England also suggested that adding different materials and textures to the paperback/hard copy books might also help attract and hold a child’s interest. She also thought that a CD, to play along with the book, might be a nice addition.
Along those same lines, I was the only one who caught on to the “Life Cycle theme”; perhaps because of my involvement with the Monarch exhibit. Thus, the author might want to add that to the insert or preface material, for those not familiar with the life cycle.
I would like to thank the author for requesting our review and sincerely hope he takes our review comments as constructively as they are intended. Overall, we all found the approach a wonderful way to attract and hold (given a few changes) a child’s attention as well as providing a new and unique learning tool for teachers.