Circular Argument: First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Win a Caldecott and a Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor Award in the same year, and what does it get you?
Well, two silver medals on your dust jacket and an apparent sellout of your book in the case of author-illustrator-book designer extraordinaire Laura Seeger. Ironically, seven months after its publication and two months since First the Egg (Caldecott Honor Book and Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book (Awards)) was a double winner at the American Library Association's annual awards presentation, it's still hard to find a copy, although I saw my first copy recently in a local big-box bookstore.

Whenever and however you find it, though, this book is worth the wait. Seeger's die-cut design is both beautiful and inventive, with each diecut shape taking its color from its succeeding figure on the following page. The text begins with "First the..." followed by a white cutout in the shape of the egg. When the page is turned, we see that the egg's color is that of the chicken, whose egg opens to show a yellow chick.

In succession we see a cutout of a green tadpole open to reveal a green frog, a seed become part of its flower, and a caterpillar become a part of a chrysalis and then a butterfly. A page of what first appears to be random letters offers the text "First the..." and a rectangular cutout which combines a W __D through which we see the letters O R to spell out WORD. Turning to the next page opens the diecut rectangle to show the word THEN framed by the rectangular hole, followed by THE STORY to spell out First the WORD, then the STORY:

Once upon a time there was an egg and a chicken and a tadpole and a flower and a caterpillar and a butterfly and . . .

The next page follows with "First the paint" (from tube to palette)...and then the picture. First the chicken...Then the EGG." The final illustration is of the chicken, its nest, and a cracked and empty egg as the story comes full cycle.

Seeger's book is a celebration of transfiguration, transformation, metamorphosis, --or just plain change at once satisfying and moving, but also a demonstration which reminds us that what we see through the "hole" is never the whole of the thing itself.