With beautiful, sweeping artwork and spare, lyrical text, Ed Young tells the story of a boy who finds an egg and gives it to a flock of chickens. When the egg hatches not a chick but an eaglet, the hens, the roosters, and the boy all band together to help the young bird fly. In this lovely story about friendship and dedication, the eaglet perseveres and leaves behind the dusty earth for endless pastel skies.

Let your little one's imagination soar right alongside the baby eagle, Hook, in this Caldecott Medal winning tale. The text and pictures are set up in such a way that they are both minimal and would not be entirely clear on their own, but together tell a beautiful story of determination, help, and perhaps destiny. The book is physically large and tall, so this is one Mom or Dad may be holding, and your little one can focus on the large pictures. The sentences are short and used sparingly. The pictures are earthy-colored combinations of paint and colored pencil, and are touched with a fuzzy haze. Although it's obvious what each picture is directly portraying, they seem to each have symbolic meaning behind them as well. When the young boy throws Hook from the rim of the canyon to help him learn to fly, the background at first appears to be mountains, but a closer look reveals a crouching person watching. Who or what that symbolizes is up to you to decide and explain.

Your child may interpret Hook's first flying attempt - and failure - to be funny; "He pushes off, but falls to the earth. A short first flight." However, the important lesson in this book is that Hook keeps trying to fly, and his friends, the chicken and the boy, continue encouraging him. Hook fails a few more times, but all of the characters seem to feel - to know - he is destined to fly, so he never gives up. He does finally succeed and "raises to where he belongs...For he wasn't meant for earth." Discussing this lesson with your child will help the story make more sense to them, and instill a great lesson. You can also spend some time discussing the abstract pictures, what they mean, and why they are drawn the way they are.

I read this book to my friend, Nick, when he was three. He enjoyed staring at the pictures so much that he kept asking me to slow down and wait so that he could look at each page long and hard. I asked him if he would keep trying to fly if he were a bird and having trouble at first. He nodded and repeated, "Bird. Fly high." I gave him big kudos for making the appropriate connection, and spent the rest of the book pointing at words and the picture to encourage more associations.

--Audra