WHAT WILL HATCH?

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.