New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2015
It is hard to go wrong with the team of Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. They’ve written 16 excellent children’s books together, and Egg: Nature’s Perfect Package is no exception. From the color scheme to the structure and layout, this book is a pleasure! It is organized into sections that explain all things egg: who lays eggs; types, quantity and sizes of eggs; where animals lay eggs, what predators might eat those eggs and how the parents protect them; and on until finally we learn how the babies get out of the eggs. Readers discover that there are as many ways to lay, carry, and care for eggs as there are species that use them to reproduce.
The torn- and cut-paper collage illustrations throughout the book are clear and accurate, not to mention beautiful, and the intriguing text is spot-on for the target age group. At the end there is a fantastic glossary with pictures, along with a list of additional reading. This, and really any picture book from Jenkins and Page (or Jenkins on his own), is an essential part of an elementary school library collection.
Idaho Core Standards: Reading Standards for Informtional Text K-5: Grades K & 1, Standards 1-9; Grade 2, Standards 1, 3-7; Grade 3, Standards 1-8; Grade 4, Standards 1-5, 7-9.
Dewey: 591.468 Interest Level: Grades K-4
Awards and Reviews: Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal.
For your summer reading pleasure, a list of other Steve Jenkins titles to consider: Actual Size; Almost Gone; The Animal Book: A Collection of the Fastest, Fiercest, Toughest, Cleverest, Shyest – and Most Surprising – Animals on Earth; Animals in Flight; The Beetle Book; Big and Little; Biggest, Strongest, Fastest; Bones: Skeletons and How They Work; Crature Features: 25 Animals Explain Why They Look the Way They Do; Dogs and Cats; Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea; Eye to Eye: How Animals See the World; Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest; How Many Ways – Can You Catch a Fly?; How to Clean a Hippopotamus: A look at Unusual Animal Partnerships; How to Swallow a Pig – Step-by-Step Advice from the Animal Kingdom; I see a Kookaburra!: Discovering Animal Habitats Around the World; Just a Second: A Different Way to Look at Time; Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution; Living Color; Looking Down; Move!; My First Day; Never Smile at a Monkey: and 17 Other Important This to Remember; Prehistoric Actual Size; Sisters and Brothers: Sibling Relationships in the Animal World; Slap, Squeak and Scatter: How Animals Communicate; Time for a Bath; Time to Eat; Time to Sleep; The Top of the World: Climbing Mount Everest; What Do You Do When Something Wants to Eat You?; What Do You Do with a Tail Like This?
* Plus many of these titles are available in Spanish!
Fiction Pairing: Eat Like a Bear by April Pulley Sayre
On the Web:
San Diego Zoo Kids at http://kids.sandiegozoo.org. Animal themed games, activities, videos and information about all the animals at the San Diego Zoo!