by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
32 pages; ages 4-8
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
If you're wondering what came first - it's the egg! And if you're wondering what drew me to this book, it's the simplicity of the cover. An almost perfect egg with just a bit of beak showing... I want to know what emerges.
This book is filled with wonderful illustrations of eggs of all kinds, from banana slug eggs to frog eggs to lizard eggs... with a couple of strange mammals tucked in their shells as well. Steve Jenkins and Robin Page have done a marvelous job showing the diversity of egg-layers and the eggs they lay.
I love the spread where they compare the actual size of eggs, from a period-sized stink-bug egg to an elephant bird egg too large to fit on the page. They show where each animal lays its eggs, and how many eggs it usually lays.
Eggs are tasty and nutritious, so the birds and bugs and frogs and snails must protect their eggs - and incubate them until they hatch. Once incubated, there's the problem of getting out of the egg: beak? feet?
If you want to get the inside scoop about what life is like inside an egg, there are a couple timelines showing development of a chicken and an alligator. There is also a lot of back matter where you can learn more about the egg-layers featured in the book.
Today's review is part of the STEM Friday roundup. Drop by STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. Perfect picture book Friday is on summer break, but you can still drop by Susanna Leonard Hill's site to read previous posts. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copy from the publisher.
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