The Easter Chick

I recently read a children’s picture book called The Easter Chick by Geraldine Elschner. For some reason I found the book really strange. I am not sure if it was the dark illustrations or the content of the book. The book is about an egg that does not want to hatch, basically the little chick in the egg refuses to hatch until Easter Sunday. So the little chick asks its mother what day is Easter Sunday. The mother hen does not know, so she asks a number of other animals if they know the date who also don not know. Finally she finds a wise barn owl who knows when it is Easter Sunday.

The book does look at religion because the focus of the story is about finding out when it is Easter Sunday, as it does change each year. Near the end of the book the barn owl tells both the mother hen and the reader that “Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon that comes after the first day of spring” (15). Now personally I never knew this was why Easter Sunday changes each year, I never actually thought about it, until now.

One of the reasons I found this book odd was because in every page of the book there is a picture of a rabbit etched somewhere. In some of the pages it is extremely hard to find the rabbit which makes me think why did the illustrator Alexandra Junge include the rabbit? I know the Easter rabbit is a symbol for Easter, but there are pictures where I just couldn’t find the rabbit. With the help of my sister we eventually found all the rabbits.

So below are some of the pictures, can you find the rabbit…?
I hope the pictures are clear enough!

Front Cover

Mother Hen: "Errr what just happened"

My Favourite Picture

The answers are at the end of this blog!

At the end of the picture story everything is resolved and on Easter Sunday the chick finally decides to hatch in the barn.There are a number of animals that witness this Easter birth alongside some children and farmers. In a way it is symbolic to Jesus’s birth as it takes place outside in a barn (although Jesus’s birth was in a stable) and it is witnessed by others. Who knows what is going to happen to this little chick, I think there are two possible endings. The first is that the chick will live a happy life on the farm and will go on to lay eggs and eventually be killed for its meat. The second possible ending is that it will get eaten by the big cat that is eyeing it up on the last page…

Greedy Cat: "DINNER!!"

Personally I think The Easter Chick is not the best information picture book for children regarding Easter. However it does have interesting pictures and it does teach children why Easter Sunday falls on a different Sunday every year, so it is informative in places!

ANSWER ALERT: 

1) top right corner. 2) left page in the middle on the brown barn wall. 3)Top right corner in the clouds. 

Well done if you found them all! There are some harder ones in the picture book if you are up for a challenge.