Reviews

Butterfly for a King: Saving Hawaiʻi's Kamehameha Butterflies by Cindy Trumbore, Susan L. Roth

moxiegirlzriot's review against another edition

4.0

A great story for both younger and older readers with a short lyrical story that follows the illustrations and more in depth details about the Butterfly Project for older readers. This includes pronunciation guides for unfamiliar words and an afterward with more information about Hawai'i and the project.

knaka's review against another edition

5.0

Published 2021
Orbis Pictus Award
Nonfiction

I really liked getting to hear about the history of the Kamehameha butterfly and how students helped to create change. I think this is a great book that can inspire students that they have the power to change things.

wordnerd153's review against another edition

3.0

Interesting, but the narrative doesn’t hold up without reading the info at the bottom, which was too long for my 5-yo

naomiysl's review against another edition

3.0

Great illustrations, and lovely story as well. I'm a little unsure of the audience, with this much text in a picture book format. There is simpler, larger text up top, and this is the text that I would read to the 4 & under crowd, but it is so spare as to be difficult to follow without the additional text supporting it. Still, a well researched book with good back-matter, and a lovely topic choice.

kay_reads_'s review against another edition

3.0

I think I liked this more than others--I found the longer, informational text really compelling and detailed the illustrations are striking--but I did feel overall that this was missing important pieces. I like that there is simplified text on each page in addition to the detailed nonfiction paragraphs, but they didn't match up well and I think could have been used to tell a more detailed story while still being short. And honestly, I jut wish publishers gave more opportunities to Indigenous folks to write their own stories. Even though this book is about the butterfly, it feels lacking in its inclusion of people native to Hawai'i.