Happy Perfect Picture Book Friday, Everyone!

My house has a little roofed porch over the front door.

We never use the front door, mind you, but the little porch is excellent for hanging Christmas lights on, and it provides two lovely little sheltered spots for bird nests.  For years, every spring, we had bird families raising their babies.

But along came a year when the porch had to be cleaned and painted in August, and the painter removed the empty nests and cleaned the little sheltered spots thoroughly…

…and the birds didn’t come back 😦

For 3 years, there have been no nests in the little porch and I have missed them.

But lo and behold, look who showed up this week 🙂

Maybe it’s silly, but it makes me happy to see them again.

So today, for my Perfect Picture Book, I chose a book about a nest 🙂

It’s an older book – one I read as a child so that will give you a hint as to just how old! 🙂 – and is one of my All Time Favorites!

Flap Your Wings

Written & Illustrated By: P.D. Eastman

Random House, 1969, Fiction

Suitable For: ages 3-8

Themes/Topics: assumptions, non-traditional family, unconditional love, responsibility

Opening: (this is actually the first three pages.)

“An egg lay in the path.

A boy came down the path.  He saw the egg.  “Someone might step on that egg and break it,” he said.

He looked around.

He saw flamingos and frogs, and turtles and alligators.  “Whose egg is this?” he called.  But no one answered.”

Brief Synopsis:  A little boy finds an egg.  He doesn’t want it to get damaged, so he looks around until he finds the nest and carefully puts it back.  When Mr. and Mrs. Bird come home, they are surprised to find an egg in their nest… it wasn’t there when they left!  But Mr. Bird says that if an egg is in their nest it must be their egg, so they must take care of it.  So they do… with very surprising results!

Links To Resources:  Ideas And Activities For Guided Reading, Incubation & Embryology Activities, use with An Egg Is Quiet (from PPBF link list), talk about what kind of animals, insects and reptiles lay eggs and how the eggs are the same and different.

Why I Like This Book:  This book is fun to read as a picture book, but is also an I Can Read type book that is very accessible to new readers.  The pictures are delightful – Mr. and Mrs. Bird’s expressions are very entertaining.  But I really love the story because it doesn’t go where you would expect.  It’s funny.  And it’s a great example of what agents, editors and reviewers mean when they talk about re-readability.  This book delighted me as a child, and delighted my children in their turn.  I’ve read it so many times that even now, years since I last read it to my kids, I can recite almost the whole book.  It’s fun every time 🙂

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do 🙂

For the complete list of books with resources, please visit Perfect Picture Books.

PPBF folks, please add your titles and post-specific links (and any other info you feel like filling out 🙂 ) to the form below so we can all come see what fabulous picture books you’ve chosen to share this week!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!!! 🙂

(And if you’re in the Millbrook area, come visit the me and all my fabulous author and illustrator friends at the Millbrook Literary Festival! 🙂 )