Easter Eggs-travganza!!

If Easter eggs are on the holiday calendar, it's time for an egg-cellent bunny tale.

Easter is on its way, and for those family members looking for healthy (or at least non-chokeable) treats for an Easter basket for the very youngest, there is a brand-new book, a wired-for-sound version of the evergreen hit from 1950!

Steve Nelson's Here Comes Peter Cottontail!
(Candy Cane Press, 2014) has more to offer than the average seasonal holiday kiddy book.  Within a super-sturdy brand-new board book edition, this one features quite charming and appropriately pastel pink and purple-hued illustrations by artist Jack Rollins.

Peter, an amiably bespectacled bunny, assembles a basket-barrow of spring bouquets, an Easter bonnet and orchid corsage for Mom, colored eggs and a chocolate bunny to boot, "that he's hiding everywhere!" for the children. Along with all the words to the familiar song, two lines per page, to read aloud, there is a large, easy-to-press blue button on the cover which plays a soft and pleasant run-through of the tune, with blissfully only one repetition per push, for sing-along or read-alone fun!

For more Easter basket treats for tots, add Tad Hill's best-selling board book, Duck & Goose, Here Comes the Easter Bunny!, Oliver Dunrea's Ollie's Easter Eggs board book (Gossie & Friends), Laura Numeroff's Happy Easter, Mouse! (If You Give...),  or some weebly-wobbly unbreakable Easter eggs, Playskool Weebles Spring Basket, Lamb and Chick. to brighten up that first Easter basket.

A Brother from Another Mother? Dino Duckling by Alison Murphy

EVEN AS AN EGG, DINO DUCKLING WAS DIFFERENT.

Mama Duckling struggles to balance on top of her big, strange, blue egg, sitting tall among her relatively small duck eggs. Incubation is a challenge.

And when her eggs crack, the little ones are cute yellow bundles of fluff, but the big egg hatches out as one indisputably Ugly Duckling. But Mama Duck loves them all, and although it's a stretch, manages to take all her babies under her wings.

"BIG AND WIDE,
SLEEK AND SLIM,
WE'RE A FAMILY,
AND WE ALL FIT IN!"

Mama Duck gets busy teaching her hatchlings all the things they need to know as they grow--swimming, catching fish, how to share with each other, and how to navigate by the stars. The three little ducklings take to it like, well, ducks to water. Dino Duckling? Not so much.

It doesn't come easy to Dino Duckling. It's one thing to believe being different is a good thing, but the other creatures in the pond don't always see it that way. His swimming style is mostly thrash and splash, and the swans take umbrage in having their feathers ruffled and their elegant glide interrupted. In the lovely little pond, Dino Duckling is the equivalent of the metaphoric bull in the china shop.

SOMETIMES BEING DIFFERENT WAS DIFFICULT.

And as the summer goes by and the ducklings lose their yellow fuzz and grow sleek feathers, Dino Duckling stays the same--only BIGGER. MUCH BIGGER!

And when autumn arrives and it's time for the ducks to fly south for the winter, Dino Duckling just can't get this migration thing off the ground. He's left alone, weeping in the willows by the river.

"DIFFERENCE DOES MATTER," HE THOUGHT SADLY.

But Mother Duck doesn't despair. Where there's a will, there's a way, and she comes up with a just ducky solution to send them all south in style, in Alison Murphy's Dino Duckling (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). Dealing with all kinds of differences in the family and in the wider world is an important matter, even for pre- and primary schoolers, and Murphy's sweet and funny story spells out her premise with bouncy rhymes and with visual humor in her gentle illustrations of a family determined to break the mold to make sure they leave no sibling behind. Says Kirkus Reviews, "Reassurance for the Dino Duckling in every family!"

And if you need a pair to share, try Kallie George's Duck, Duck, Dinosaur and sequels. (See reviews here.)

High-Speed Chase! The Runaway Egg by Katy Hudson

Mother Hen said, "Chick, would you watch your baby brother for a bit?

Keep him warm and safe until I get back!"

How hard can that be? thinks Chick, since his brother is an egg. It's not like he's going to do anything.

But no sooner does Mrs. Hen fly the coop than Chick hears a ominous CRACK from the bottom of the egg, and out pops--a leg. With an even more ominous KER-RACK, another leg pokes out, and YIPES! the egg is afoot!

Egg is off, and the chase is on!

Egg blindly races right past the PIG STY sign and along the top rail of the pig pen. Chick, however, is not so nimble and falls into the mucky mud. Yuck! But he bravely charges on, as his brother bumbles into the sheep barn where shearing is in progress and some scary scissors snip just a bit from Chick's stubby tail feathers! HEY!

"THAT'S MY BOTTOM!"

But Chick has no time to lament his abbreviated tail feathers. His brother dashes on, right into the pen of .... THE BULL! Egg, no doubt seeking warmth, cozies up right next to the burly bull who's taking a snooze, just as his shell decides to crack a bit more, allowing one tiny wing to protrude. Chick courageously grabs his little brother's wing and reverses course in a race back to the chicken coop, with the abruptly wakened Bull hot on his heels, arriving just in the nick of time before Mama Hen waddles in.

"Look!" she cried. "Your baby brother is hatched!

Are you ready to be a big brother?"

Chick's weary look fairly drips with an ironic "If you only knew....", in Katy Hudson's delightfully droll latest, The Runaway Egg (Random House, 2017). There's plenty of slapstick farmyard fun as Chick pursues the egg on legs through the barnyard with his own well-being somewhat in doubt, and Hudson, author of the popular Too Many Carrots, has the knack of storytelling well in hand as her action flows quickly from left to right with each page turn. Hudson's clever artwork, done in a fine blackline and what looks to be digital "watercolors," captures the faces of the various bemused animals as they witness the odd spectacle of an egg on legs chased by a chick through the flowers and across the barnyard. It's all great fun, just right for Eastertide and springtime reading. "Being an older sibling has never been this harrowing and hilarious," say Kirkus Reviews.