Cracking Up!: Good Egg by Barney Saltzberg

In ten words and a couple of page-turning tumbles, Barney Saltzberg's little board-bound toy and movable book, Good Egg (Workman, 2009) is, as the publisher's blurb promises, a real crack-up.

Die-cuts, page-sized flaps, pull tabs, swing tabs, velcro tabs for a catchable beach ball, and a final surprising pop-up make this book lots of fun for little fingers and eyes, but the humor is the eggstra that puts this creation sunny-side up.

The experience begins with a flat white egg with the caption "EGG." The waiting egg is commanded to sit, whereupon a lifted page flap reveals the obedient egg seated in a chair. Like a dutiful doggy, the egg goes on to lie down, roll over, shake, and play catch, each to earn the approbation of "GOOD EGG!"

The final command to speak gives the egg pause. It seems to crack up under the strain, especially when the command is repeated with an amplified "SPEAK!" A pull tab first reveals a chick peeping warily between the cracked halves, but a turn of the final page pops up the chick, its wings flapping, its beak cheeping proudly, right out of the egg. Good egg, indeed!

To see that this book is all it's cracked up to be, take a look at its perky preview video here.

A great story time break for the pre-Easter period, Saltzberg's Good Egg takes its place with Laura Vaccaro Seeger's award-winning First the Egg (Caldecott Honor Book and Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor Book (Awards)) for eggs-traordinary springtime fun.

Eggs-tra! Eggs-tra! Tillie Lays an Egg by Terry Golson

Tillie is a determinedly free-range chicken--and when it's time to lay her eggs, she refuses to be coop-ed up in the henhouse.

On Little Pond Farm there is standing room only for the only nesting box, so while Buffy, Ginger, Marge, Edwina, Prudence, and Twinkydink make use of the, um, facilities in the coop, Tillie decides to look for alternative seating.

Juicy worms beckon beyond the barnyard's corn trough, and Tillie just follows her beak to gustatory adventure.

"Yum!" she thinks, "there are plenty of tasty worms here!"

But a hen's gotta do what a hen's gotta do, and soon Tillie lays her daily egg on the run, right on the running board of the farm's trusty pickup truck, that is.

As the week goes by, Tillie ventures onto the farmhouse porch on Tuesday for her breakfast, leaving an egg by the broom and dustpan behind the door; on Wednesday she hops onto the kitchen table for a snack and leaves her egg in the sugar bowl; on Thursday she seeks a cozy nest in the laundry room and drops her egg softly on the ironing board; and on Friday she explores the bedroom, leaving a fresh egg by the rain boots on the floor.

"Hmmph!" This place has everything but worms," she grumbles.

Saturday, however, dawns dark and rainy and Tillie has to compromise her free-range roaming ways:

"Drat! I don't want to get my feathers wet! This nest is warm and dry and very comfy!"

"Finally!" cluck the other hens. "Tillie laid an egg!"

Youngsters who are familiar with Walter Wick's Can You See What I See? series will feel at home on the (free) range with Tillie, as author Terry Golson and ace photographer Ben Fink arrange charming vignettes of kitschy period decor among which Tillie deigns to deposit her daily egg. Answering the repeated "Where did Tillie lay her egg?" will keep preschoolers delightedly pointing out Tillie's eggstra-ordinary egg-laying spots as they page through Tillie Lays An Egg. Young children will find eggs-cellent fun among the author's own personable hens who are the stars of these appealing glimpses into egg hunting down on the farm.