Customer Reviews

The Egg Tree

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Egg Tree is a great story about a little girl's Easter morning egg-hunting experience. Though she is unsuccessful, she does uncover a wonderful Easter suprise. The little girl, and the reader, is introduced to the Pennsylvania Dutch technique of painting eggs, when she finds a cache of her grandmother's beautifully decorated eggs. The examples of folk art throughout the book are wonderful, and easily accessible for children. This book will prompt your family to begin their own egg decorating tradition.

We use this book as a basis each year for an Egg Tree in Kindergarten. We read the story, then water color 2 dimensional construction paper eggs, and I paint the trunk on a bulletin board. The result is so cool--it is wonderfully colorful. I also have some Czech decorated real eggs to show them. This is a great book. For those worried about a religious setting for Easter (I'm not), this story has no mention of Easter as a religious holiday. It is an old story, but sometimes the old stories are the best. I wish the pictures were a little more colorful. I have never seen a publication of this book with more than 3 colors. Maybe it's because I'm a grandma, but I often wish that the older books would be republished. The kids like colors and gravitate toward those books that have newer graphics. But, some of the authors from the 40's, 50's and 60's are wonderful books, such as Margaret Wise Brown, and this one.

Easter egg trees just haven't caught on to the same extent their Christmas tree brethren have. In today's high tech, fast-paced, Internet age it's a calming thing to stop a think a little bit about Easter eggs, and the trees on which they hang. "The Egg Tree" won its Caldecott medal in 1951 and became the selection of choice of the Institute of Graphic Arts. Here, author Katherine Milhous has taken the lively colors and sweeping designs of the Pennsylvania Dutch and applied them to a tale of Easter discoveries and mild fame.

Siblings Katy and Carl are spending their Easter seasons with their Grandmom and cousins. This being their first Easter with such relatives, they are woefully unprepared for the annual Easter Egg hunt. Katy is disappointed when she cannot find any eggs, but discovers a cache of beautifully hand-painted eggs tucked away in the attic. This leads to Grandmom teaching all the kiddies how to paint their own eggs, culminating in an egg tree that displays their work (and garners widespread fame as well).

Children unfamiliar with the Pennsylvania Dutch lifestyle will undoubtedly wonder why the characters in this tale look Amish. Some simple explanations (always assuming the parents themselves understand the distinction) may be in order. After that, expect to be fielding requests for egg painting as well. Helpful instructions detailing how one goes about egg painting are included on the back of the book jacket. Certainly the book and the instruction make egg blowing seem to be the simplest thing in the world. Just don't be surprised if you have a mighty difficult time blowing egg yolks out of tiny tiny holes.

On the whole, the book is strong. The colors are a little more muted than those of books today. And apart from Katy's initial fears that she would not find a single egg, there's not much in the way of dramatic tension. But that's all right. This book's a class act through and through. It may seem a bit dated, it's true. Just the same, it's nice to see a book looking at one of the less lauded holidays once in a while.

We love the Egg Tree idea, and the way Katy discovers the old painted eggs. We don't have the Easter Bunny (Rabbit) as a family tradition, and this book starts and ends with him. Also, the book uses "Easter" and "spring" interchangeably.

We love how the family keeps the egg-painting tradition alive and shares their light and the beauty of their tree with their neighbors.

ISBN 0689704925 - Printed in the United States of America. Age range not stated. Paperback, 29 pages. Published by Aladdin Books/Atheneum in 1981. Story and illustrations by Katherine Milhous. The Caldecott Medal winner.

Katy and Carl are visiting their grandmother on Easter and Katy is awake early, eager to start the Easter egg hunt. Once they've seen the Easter Bunny hop through the garden, the siblings wake their cousins and the race is on to see who will find the most eggs. Katy has very poor luck because this is her first egg hunt at Grandmom's and she doesn't know the hiding places yet. Feeling down, she goes up the attic steps to search there and, to her surprise, finds a whole box of colorful eggs. When she takes them downstairs, Grandmom tells the children that these are eggs that she, herself, painted when she was a little girl. They're hollow inside and decorated with small pictures and the children all want to learn how to make them. Grandmom agrees to teach them - tomorrow. Today, they'll keep Easter.

The next day, the children all learn how to make the lovely hollow eggs and then Grandmom shows them how to display them on an Egg Tree. The children enjoy this so much that they start the egg-painting earlier than usual the next year and the tree is so fantastic that people come from all around to see it.

I am SO disappointed with this book. Although it does introduce the IDEA of Egg Trees, there is nothing here of any substance to explain the history or tradition of them. What an opportunity missed! Since this is the only book I've ever seen that even mention the egg tree, my disappointment is huge. The illustrations are, for the most part, tri-colored and not especially eye-catching, but they do have an old world charm to them. On the negative side, the images look very Amish in style and, since the book never specifically mentions the Pennsylvania Dutch, few children today would think of anything BUT the Amish when looking at these drawings. So that's another opportunity squandered. This really leaves me wondering if the Caldecott standards were stunningly low in the 1950s or if books were just really bad then so it wasn't hard to be the best.

I love this book for trying to be something other than an Easter Bunny tale. I love the thought that a really old tradition might now be made appealing to children. For those reasons, and because the text is engaging and the illustrations are charming, I'm giving it four stars. I just hate that it was done in a seemingly half-hearted way.

- AnnaLovesBooks

This book contains a wonderful story that children of all ages will enjoy, and should be exposed to. It is a great story to be told around Easter time, and it is a must have for any accomplished or imaginative readers' collection. It may be a children's book, but that is no reason why you shouldn't check it out for yourself! I hope that this may help you decide to look into it, and I am certain you will like it.

The Egg Tree started a new tradition in my household. The children loved to create eggs and place them on the branches.