Butterflies

Butterflies will have you saying “By Proboscis! I never knew that about butterflies!” Reading this book sequentially is not required as each page spread has information that could be read on its own. The book begins by explaining what a butterfly is. You might next wonder how a butterfly differs from a moth, but fear not intrepid reader! It is explained definitively on the “Butterfly vs. Moth” page spread. Oh- they don’t actually engage in combat with one another on this ‘vs.’ page. The term ‘vs.’ is used simply for comparison reasons. What follows this is likely what most laypeople in butterfly studies will find very interesting! Six different families of butterflies exist and are identified and described with each family receiving its own page spread. The last half of the book covers topics such as the biggest, fastest, habitats, life cycle, metamorphosis, diet, predators, adaptations, caterpillar defenses, migration (both southward and northward), and suggestions on how people can help butterflies thrive and survive.

A great book, Butterflies is colorful and engaging. It’s a little book that is packed full of information, and yet it feels like each page has just the right balance of images and text. The first shocking thing the reader will notice is that it doesn’t have a table of contents or an index. It is surprising that it doesn’t because the book, itself, has information that readers may want to retrieve later. For example, the colorful pages and well-laid out text dedicate a page to each of the six families of butterflies, but, if you wished to quickly refer to the book for a couple of facts about the ‘skipper’ family, you would have to flip through the book to find it. The counter to this argument is that the book is very short and finding the information is quite easy - for an accomplished reader. The target age group, however, would have benefitted from the additions of a contents page and an index.

There is little information about the author(s), Wendy Einstein and Einstein Sisters. After scouring the internet and employing google for 0.43 seconds, it was revealed that Amazon had some information. Apparently, Wendy “Pirk” (not Einstein here) had intended to be a veterinarian but turned to anthropology, environmentalism and travel. There is no information about the Einstein ‘Sisters’ other than that ‘they’ travel the world and share their knowledge in “a fun and colorful way”.