Non-Fiction for youth review: An Egg is Quiet
My little reluctant reader (age 8) LOVES science. She makes a beeline to the dinosaur exhibit at the Children's museum and especially loves the area with the fossils and eggs. I thought she and I would read this book together and learn some things. An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston with illustrations by Sylvia Long
- Grade Level: Kindergarten - 3
- Publisher: Chronicle Books; Reprint edition (March 4, 2014)
My daughter is at the top of the grade level range for this book, but as I said, she is a reluctant reader. She has a vision impairment as well that hindered her learning to read as quickly as her smart little brain would have otherwise allowed. We read the Kindle version of this book, so I would like to talk for a minute about accessibility. It was really disappointing how small the print was on this e-book. Most of the time I can access e-books quite well, often much better than paper books. For this book, however, the print was so tiny that my daughter and I were both really struggling to make out the text even when we opened the book on my 13 inch MacBook to enlarge the print. I haven't seen the physical book, so I'm not entirely sure if it would have been better or worse trying to read it off the paper. In addition, much of the book is written in a fancy script font, which looks very nice but is harder for children, reluctant readers, or those with visual impairment to read. I would have liked to see slightly less attention paid to the aesthetics of this book and more attention paid to the content being accessible to all. Even my ten year old daughter with near perfect vision who is an excellent reader had a bit of a hard time making out some of the text. I would like to check out a physical book in this series to see if the print is any more legible. Another option could be an audiobook version, but I wasn't able to easily find one.
When I asked my 8 year old what she liked most about this book, she said, "I liked the pictures and that there was so much information." She said what she didn't like was, "HOW SMALL THE WORDS WERE!" This book does have lots of appealing elements. The illustrations are whimsical while also presenting some scientific authenticity. The eggs aren't shown exactly to scale, but the varying sizes are represented. There are lots of fun facts about varying types of eggs and the creatures that come out of the eggs. Some of the pages were nice for reading aloud, while others are more of a catalogue style page that is not as well suited for reading aloud.
These books are part of a series. The other titles are
A Nest is Noisy
A Seed is Sleepy
A Rock is Lively
A Butterfly is Patient
A Beetle is Shy
These books would be nice for winding down before a nap or bedtime or for quiet reading time for a child who can individually read the print and the script.
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