What Came First! Egg: Nature's Perfect Package by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Eggs come in a fantastic range of sizes, shapes, and colors. Animals that lay eggs bury them, carry them, guard them, or simply leave them alone.
And each egg contains everything needed to create a new living creature.
If it's an animal, it's a sure thing that there was an egg involved somewhere in its past. Many animals lay them outside their bodies (even the mammalian echidna and platypus), and those who do so need to see that they stay warm or protected while they incubate. Sea turtles swim huge distances to lay eggs in sand with just the right summer temperature. Bird parents sit on them, (or stand, in the case of the emperor penguin) and mouth brooders like the jawfish go hungry while they hold their eggs safe in their mouths. The spider wasp uses her venom to paralyze a spider and lays her eggs safely inside the quarry, with breakfast handy when they emerge. And, of course, the rest of us mammals keep our eggs on the inside, heated by our internal body heat to just the perfect temperature for maturation before they emerge to engage the weather outside.
It's an amazing and amazingly diverse process that goes on inside that incredible egg, as Steve Jenkins' and Robin Page's latest, Egg: Nature's Perfect Package
Young readers who think of eggs as just something for breakfast will gain a new appreciation of these miraculous containers of life. As Kirkus Reviews says, "Appealing, accessible and accurate, this is another admirable creation."
Labels: Animal Reproduction (Grades K-4), Eggs
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home