In a fascinating survey of inhabitants of land, sea and sky, the husband-and-wife team behind My First Day takes readers to the encasement from which various creatures hatch.
Robin Page and Steve Jenkins begin with a variety of "egg layers," with the parent at the top; next, an image of its egg, often enlarged; followed, at the bottom, with the egg's actual size. Jenkins's collage images depict textures that range from the smoothness of a banana slug to the prickles of an echidna. The authors point out nature's contradictions: "The kiwi, a bird smaller than a chicken, is thousands of times larger than the egg of a giant squid." The number of eggs each animal produces varies wildly: the fish tapeworm can produce a million eggs a day for 20 years, while a royal albatross lays a single egg every two years. Children will delight in details tucked away on each spread. A mother splash tetra, for instance, is a fish that "leaps from the water and attaches her eggs to an overhanging leaf," and the gender of a baby alligator is determined by temperature ("Warmer parts of the nest produce males, cooler ones, females").
The thoughtful design allows for meaty captions and a variety of ways to display visual information. The predominant greens of the red-eyed tree frog's eggs contrast nicely with the red markings on the shell of the brine shrimp. Parallel time-lapse images depict developing eggs of a chicken and alligator, and detailed endnotes offer additional size and habitat information for each creature featured. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness