Alma Flor Ada

Daniel’s Mystery Egg
El huevo misterioso de Daniel
Daniel’s Mystery Egg / El huevo misterioso de Daniel

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Daniel finds an egg. What kind of ani­mal will this mys­tery egg hatch? Imag­i­na­tions run wild as the kids in Daniel’s class guess what sort of sur­prise the egg has in store.

Teach­ers com­ment that this is an excel­lent book to prac­tice pre­dic­tion, since Daniel’s friends are actu­ally pre­dict­ing which ani­mal may hatch from the sur­pris­ing egg. Of course they are also enjoy­ing it as a book to talk about ani­mals who hatch from eggs.

Some teach­ers have paired this book with another of Alma Flor’s books: Who’s Hatch­ing Here? — ¿Quién nac­erá aquí?

G. Brian Karas has illus­trated dozens of pop­u­lar books, includ­ing Cinder-Elly and Sleep­less Beauty by Frances Minters, Sav­ing Sweet­ness and Rais­ing Sweet­ness by Diane Stan­ley, and the HiRise Pri­vate Eyes beginning-reader series by Cyn­thia Rylant. He lives in Rhine­back, New York. For this book he used pho­tos of Alma Flor’s grand­son Daniel to illus­trate the pro­tag­o­nist which Daniel inspired.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

My children’s child­hood has been the inspi­ra­tion of many of my books. As Latino chil­dren grow­ing up in the United States some of their expe­ri­ences reflected that cir­cum­stance, many oth­ers were uni­ver­sal, and a few were sim­ply unique. Now, I am the grand­mother of nine chil­dren of mixed her­itage, whose her­itage includes that of their fathers’ who are both Peru­vian and Cuban and their moth­ers’ of Euro­pean ances­try with gen­er­a­tions in the United Sates.

I wanted to honor my grand­son Daniel, a boy of great sen­si­tiv­ity and kind­ness by mak­ing him the pro­tag­o­nist of this book, as of Daniel’s Pet.

REVIEWS

School Library Journal

Grade 1–2. An appeal­ing story in which a boy finds a small white egg. He shows it to three friends, one at a time. Each child spec­u­lates as to what might be inside and how to help once it has hatched. After some wait­ing, what emerges is not an ostrich or an alli­ga­tor or a duck, as his friends imag­ined, but a lizard, exactly the kind of ani­mal Daniel predicted-“small, nice, and quiet.” Karas’s col­lages cover three-fourths of each spread or page and are either above or below the text. Most are in full color, with the excep­tions being the illus­tra­tions that rep­re­sent what the three imag­ine is in the egg. Those pic­tures are more muted and depict the kids peek­ing over the edges of the scenes. With large-sized type, short sen­tences, repeated words and phrases, and plenty of illus­tra­tions, this book is just right for begin­ning read­ers. – Kath­leen Simon­etta, Indian Trails Pub­lic Library Dis­trict, Wheel­ing, IL.

Book­list

Grade 1–2. Daniel finds a lit­tle egg, puts it in a box, and shows it to his friends as they come along. The chil­dren sug­gest one dan­ger­ous or incon­ve­nient ani­mal after another that might be inside the egg, but Daniel expects a small, nice, quiet pet. To the boy’s great sat­is­fac­tion, the egg hatches and a lizard emerges. Writ­ten with a sim­ple vocab­u­lary and grow­ing sense of antic­i­pa­tion, this story will suit begin­ning read­ers well. Karas’ styl­ized illus­tra­tions, col­lages of cut paper enhanced with draw­ing and paint­ing, clearly delin­eate between the actual and imag­ined scenes. A pleas­ing entry in the Green Light Reader series. – Car­olyn Phelan

READERS’ RESPONSES

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