Eggs come in many different shapes and sizes, but the most important question to young, curious minds is what will hatch? Ward and Ghahremani stage an oviparous guessing game, using die cuts to draw attention to each different kind of egg. Sparse textual clues tease readers ("Warm seat. / What will hatch?"), while expansive visual spreads show snowy mountaintops and a male penguin's webbed toes, with die-cut egg perched atop. When readers turn the page, the die cuts seamlessly (for the most part) blend into the revealed answer scene (in this case, it becomes the belly of the presumed mother). Birds are the most obvious egg-layers of choice, but turtles, caterpillars, crocodiles and even a platypus get their chance to shine. Ghahremani's picture-book debut features incredible hand-lettering and muted, textured tones that are Etsy-hipster to the max, but they work well in this quiet nature story. Backmatter provides additional information on each animal, including the amount of time spent in an egg, plus the number of possible siblings. A simple life cycle of a chick is also appended. Science for the very young is done best through joyous learning; education will certainly hatch from these pages. (Picture book. 2-5)
PreS—Using minimal text, Ward introduces seven animals that hatch from eggs-sea turtle, penguin, tadpole, crocodile, robin, caterpillar, and platypus. The first spread includes a two to three word "clue," and the question, "What Will Hatch?" On the second spread, the clue's rhyme is completed and the answer is provided in words and illustration (e.g., "SANDY ball./WHAT will HATCH?/PADDLE and CRAWL-/SEA TURTLE."). The book is designed for use with very young children, and the illustrations are dominant. Ghahremani's folk-art gouache paintings on wood, in soft blues, browns, and greens, are filled with patterns and animals with softly rounded bodies-several in cartoon style. A die-cut hole in each sequence denotes the shape of the creature's egg and is placed among other painted eggs. Unfortunately, the sizes are not to scale. For example, the robin's egg is larger than an extra-large chicken egg, while the platypus's resembles a small pistachio nut. The dark-brown text, hand-printed letters, with some words in all capitals, some in lowercase cursive, often does not blend well with the soft illustrations. The male emperor penguin incubates its single egg in an "egg pouch" on top of its feet, as indicated in the brief endnotes on each species. However, it has a fancy crown of feathers and distinctive black, white, and yellow coloring rather than the rounded head and brown shading of the bird in the paintings. Moreover, the concept of this book will be lost on the tots to whom it is targeted.—Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
