Eggs-actly Right: I Need an Easter Egg by Harriet Ziefert

"Hummingbird, do you lay Easter eggs?" Little Rabbit asked. "I need one for my Grandma."

"No, Little Rabbit. I lay white hummingbird eggs."

It's an old story, often told in many ways. A youngster sets out to find the perfect Easter egg for someone he loves, learning along the way that Easter eggs just don't grow on trees--or in nests in trees either!

Little Rabbit visits many animals of the egg-laying persuasion--robin, sparrow, even a snake, whom he wisely decides to bypass in his search, but none of the eggs make the grade. Hummingbird's eggs are tiny; robin's are a pretty color, but only ONE color, and sparrow's are tiny and spotted--none of them what he has in mind.

"Then who LAYS Easter eggs," he asks.

"Not me!" says the dog.

"Not me!" says the goose.

"We lay lots and lots of eggs." says Mrs. Hen. "But we don't think they are Easter eggs. Our eggs are perfectly plain and perfectly white."

Brainstorm!

Little Rabbit suddenly realizes that if he can't FIND Easter eggs, he can MAKE them. With Mrs. Hen's beautiful blank eggs to work with, he picks up his paintbrush and transforms the plain Jane eggs into Easter masterpieces, just in time to take his basket of beautiful eggs to his grandmother's house.

"Happy Easter, Grandma!"

Harriet Ziefert's and Laura Rader's charming little board and flap book, I Need An Easter Egg (Holiday Lift-The-Flap), will please toddlers as they raise the flap to discover what sort of eggs each animal has to offer on each page. A great way to introduce the ritual of coloring eggs to the very young, this one is a classic of the Easter season.