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PRESCHOOL
Valério, Geraldo

The Egg

40 pp. | Owlkids | August, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-77147-374-3 $18.95
(2) PS A stork perches on its nest, protecting its pastel polka-dotted egg, but then flies off, presumably in search of food. While it is gone, wind and rain blow the egg away. The distraught stork searches but, instead of finding its own egg, discovers a different lonely egg, which it promptly brings home to care for. Surprise! The egg is actually a human child, swaddled into an egg-shaped bundle. The delighted stork feeds the baby cherries and, tucking it between its wings, flies off into a sky now filled with other atypical parent-child pairs. A parrot carries a piglet; a toucan carries a rabbit; a pelican carefully balances a goldfish in a bowl on its back. Valério (At the Pond, rev. 5/20) shows off his skill with design and collage in this wordless story about the many forms a family can take. Early in the book, he uses long, thin strips of paper slicing the page diagonally to create the rainstorm; similar elongated shapes, teardrops this time, fall from the stork's eye, showing its sadness at the loss of the egg. Later spreads, though, feature curved shapes and bright nursery colors that let viewers know all is well with the stork (though it's unclear what happened to its original egg). The tale ends with the human baby safe in the stork's nest, tucked under its adoptive parent's wing--a warmhearted ending to set the book's audience up for a good night's sleep.
Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2020

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