Becca Reviews: Backpack Explorer: Night Walk

The first thing to note is this book is published in the USA so expect American creatures and terms.

This book offers a great deal of information and opportunities to interact with the content and physical pages, including checklists and stickers. The checklists include sufficient variety to cater to children who live in the countryside or a city, rather than solely animal sounds the book also suggests listening out for cars, rustling leaves, and sirens for example.

Occasionally I found the layout of the text a little overwhelming and confusing, there is not always a clear reading order which is something the target audience, 4-8 year olds, are likely used to. Furthermore, early readers often use a finger as a guide to keep their place on the page but because of the placement of both the text and images they would have to lift their hand to see the images - just something to consider with early reader books.

The font for the subtitles kept catching my attention, not in a way I would like, because of the mix of lower case and upper case letters - again, minor and personal preference but for the age group this could cause confusion... specifically all the letters appear upper case besides the 'i'. All this to say it isn't a commonly occurring problem, namely because the font style also changes so much throughout the book which is distracting.

One of the main benefits, and perhaps purposes of this book is to remove the element of the unknown from the dark and the night-time, helping remove some of the fear also. Furthermore, readers are offered many activity ideas to try that will get them up and outside with friends and family, with some that are sure to stick with them for a long while.

Overall I haven't been age 4-8 in quite some time, try 20ish years, but I did learn things, lots of things, and if I had the physical copy of the book YOU KNOW I would be sticking the stickers in the right spots, and finally, YES I am going to plant a moon garden!

Read: 19/08/2024

Published: 10/09/2024

ISBN: 978-1635868470

Price: £10.99 (GBP)