Rating: 
Summary: A sweet and engaging little book
Review: This is a sweet little story about a caterpillar who becomes a "beautiful butterfly." My 16-month-old daughters got this book around their first birthday and love it. It really holds their interest which is very much not the case for many longer books. The artwork is simple, yet fascinating to young children (and their parents as well). Little fingers poke at the holes in the food and my girls love the shorter pages because they're easy for them to turn. The pictures and story help babies and toddlers learn to identify simple objects (moon, sun, leaf, caterpillar, butterfly, etc). We read this book along with several others every night as part of our bedtime routine, but this is the only book I have yet to get tired of even though I have long since memorized it. It's also the only book that holds my daughters' attention almost every single time. It's a great addition to any baby or toddler library.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book for young children...
Review: This is a wonderful and fun book for young children (toddler through preschool age). It can be used to help them learn the days of the week, counting, and color identification. It can also be used to suppliment a science lesson on the life cycle of the caterpillar/butterfly. I have read and used this book countless times with my own children, and they can't seem to get enough of it. They love the holes and the small pages throughout the story; those aspects of the book allow the story to be interactive with youngsters as it's being read. I think that the illustrations are magnificent. Eric Carle's use of bold colors and his technique in which the pictures are drawn, are what really make this book captivating. Each time I would read this story to my children, they would notice something different, that might have been overlooked the previous time, and they would just be in awe! As for the style of the literature, it is written very simple. It has short sentences, and uses a lot of repetition, which also allows young children to "read" along with you because they know what will be said.
Rating: 
Summary: Never understood the charm; still don't
Review: This is not one of my all-time favorite books. It strikes me as tedious, boring, and silly. I would never have bought it for my one-year-old. Unfortunately for me, a friend gave it to him for his birthday. Fortunately for him, though, Jack loves it. I rarely get out of it without at least three repetitions. The pictures are kind of pretty, in a modern art sort of way. A good book to give as a gift to someone else's child -- that way, you won't have to read it endlessly.
| 
