Aiden Dennis

The illustrations are wonderful, and the idea of blending a story line with interaction might work with some young readers, but I put Waffelo to the acid test: my grandkids. First of all, I handed the book to the 11 year old avid reader who was mildly engaged at first, but eventually tossed it aside with comments like "I don't get it; it's lame." To identify her as thoroughly bored with it is an understatement. I then tried reading and engaging my preschooler with the book. At first he was intrigued with the interaction, but he never really connected his actions with the storyline, and he's pretty sharp. Finally, he got so bored that we never finished the book. In short, we were disappointed.… (mere)

I received this as an early reviewers book.
At first glance, the book has an interesting and colorful cover and illustrations. My first impression, however, was that it doesn't seem to have a great idea of what it is trying to accomplish as a reading experience.

It is part story, part interactive experience. While I completely understand and appreciate the sort of imaginative play that inspired this book, I find the limited interactive portions to be too restricting to facilitate that same sort of imaginative play.

My 9 year old read it to our 2 and 4 year old. They were interested by the pictures and the interactive portions but only briefly. They seemed generally disinterested in the story itself. And these are kids who love being read to.

My 8 year old read the book and was bored by it. My 7 year old could't quote read the whole thing by herself.

I think the problem here is that this book only serves a limited purpose. Kids old enough to read it by themselves are likely to be bored quickly. Kids likely to be interested by the book are of the age where they will need to be read to, which makes the interactive portions a little clumsy to execute. Also, the interactive portions don't really give any feedback and are somewhat limiting.

I think, based on what I feel the target audience should be, this book would be more successful if the 'interaction' was tasks the kids were given to do. Imagine this book as primarily being read to a group of kids, probably in the 4-5 year old range.

We are a reading family, and my kids like a variety of books, but The Adventures of Captain Waffelo seems to lose itself trying to be too many things to too many audiences and generally falls flat in the process.… (mere)