Taking Care of Egg: When Blue Met Egg by Lindsey Ward

ONE SNOWY MORNING, BLUE WAS AWAKENED BY SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY FLYING THROUGH THE AIR.

A STRANGE EGG.

Blue is completely consternated to find a sizable, cold, and very white egg in his nest.

"DID ANYONE LOSE AN EGG?" BLUE ASKS.

Blue is a conscientious bird who immediately soars into action, searching for the egg's long-lost mother. Blue pops the egg into his little orange bucket and flies off over New York City, looking for the right home for his foster egg.

Their search becomes a scenic tour of wintertime New York City--Central Park and the boathouse, skyscrapers, uptown and downtown, the Statue of Liberty, and down into the subway, with many iconic Big Apple sights in the background. Blue even stops for a repast of a hot dog with all the New York trimmings from a street vendor.

EGG DIDN'T SEEM TO BE ALL THAT HUNGRY.

Blue and Egg share good times in the winter city--a whirl on a carousel, an evening at the opera (Blue shares his opera glasses with his stolid charge.) Still no Mama Bird comes forth to claim the lonely egg. As the chilly winter passes, Blue realizes that he enjoys his quiet companion and he really doesn't want to give Egg away. But one morning he notices that Egg seems smaller somehow. Blue's home remedies seem not to help this distressing shrinkage; in fact, hot soup seems to make the problem worse. And then, one warmish morning in April, Blue realizes that Egg is gone--totally gone--from his nest. Is this a tragedy?

Blue hasn't a clue, but sharp-eyed readers will know from the first page where this "egg" came from--an errant snowball toss by a bundled-up girl below Blue's tree. But Blue doesn't stay blue long, for underneath the tree he finds a flower blooming, and he is joyful in the belief that his friend has been transformed.

Lindsey Ward's When Blue Met Egg (Dial, 2012) proffers a sweet revamping of the Are You My Mother? premise, set against her charming vignettes of New York City's snowtime scenes, including a gatefold page with an intricate map of the Big City and adjacent boroughs across those familiar bridges. Ward's artwork combines delicate water-colored drawings with cut-paper collage which adds a lot to this quirky little winter-to-spring story--an egg-cellent beginning for spring and a tip of the hat to all those soon-to-come real colored eggs.