Follow a classroom of kindergartners as they participate in a popular activity: hatching chicks. Readers learn about the life cycle of a chicken, incubating eggs, watching them hatch, and raising the chicks until they are old enough to return to the chicken coop.Caroline Arnold's simple text and close-up photographs are instructive and adorable.From the Hardcover edition.
November 21, 2016
Through photographs and direct, unadorned writing, Arnold (Living Fossils) takes readers to a (real-life) kindergarten class in Los Angeles, where the teacher, Mrs. Best, brings in eggs from the chickens she keeps at home. As the children tend to the eggs, keeping track of the 21-day incubation cycle on a calendar, readers learn about the parts of an egg and how a chick develops inside. Finally, the eggs begin to hatch: “Little by little, the shell begins to crack. It is like unzipping a zipper.” Arnold’s photographs clearly show the children observing, feeding, and learning how to hold the chicks, which eventually return to Mrs. Best’s house. A glossary and answers to common questions (“When you eat an egg, are you eating a baby chick?” “Do chickens make good pets?”) conclude this up-close look at where chickens—and their eggs—come from. Ages 3–7.