Eggs-cellent Art: 50 Easter Things to Make and Do by Kate Knighton, et al

Easter is basically a religious holiday, but like those other dual sacred-and-secular observations Christmas and Halloween, with the folkways of two millennia behind us, Easter has its own secular symbols and celebrations, and those are the stuff of Usborne's 50 Easter Things to Make and Do (Usborne Activities).

Crafty creators Kate Knighton's, Lucia Pratt's, and Fiona Watts' collection of Easter handicrafts are inexpensive to produce, totally charming, kid-and-grownup friendly, and well, that word shunned by children's book reviewers, darn CUTE!

Included inside are a variety of crafts: homemade greeting cards, smudged pastel chicks easily personalized even by non-artists and a surprising open-up chick with a super-simple three-dimensional beak wide open, cottony lambs and fluffy bunnies with soft, touchable tissue coats, strings of pastel eggs to hang like Christmas lights from an Easter tree, over doorways, and around the tablecloth, quaint hats for kids and for colored eggs with silly faces, pecking hens that rock back and forth for table decorations, and directions for rabbit facepaint that even a novice can master instantly--just a few of the dandy and non-daunting designs that these veteran authors serve up. Flowers are up and trees are greening; even the ancients got into the spring thing and made it part of their celebration, and so should we.

Done up in a small spiral-bound board book format with pages of sturdy (and wipe-able) stock, one craft, with materials and step-by-step instructions, complete on each double-page spread, a book that can lie flat or even stand up for easy reference, and charming illustrations done up in the proper Easter egg palette, this one is a real keeper!