Easter Books for Children

Easter is this weekend!  If you're children are like mine you've probably been reading Easter books, coloring eggs, doing crafts with plastic eggs, preparing Easter baskets, and going to local egg hunts.  Busy, busy! I wanted to share some of the books we love, and a couple craft ideas.

My childhood Easter book:  The Story of the Easter Bunnyby Katie Campbell
Published 1993 by Unicorn Publishing House

This was a book I got for Easter when I was in pre-school.  Somehow it has been very well taken care of and I now read it each year to my own children.   I love this book.  It does start off with a lot of words and might not keep young children's attention like shorter books, but it does have a nice pose to it to be read aloud.

Katie Campbell tell a story of the Easter bunny who use to be very small, as he grew he was picked on and went through struggles, until one day a child found him very weak and nursed him.  When he was better he wanted to thank the child so he made a basket, and painted eggs and left them for her, and he returned to his home where the other bunnies picked on him and he was a beautiful grown bunny.  The Story of the Easter Bunny is like and Easter version of The Ugly Duckling.
While the story is sad, the bunny runs away from home and has a hard time, it does end sweet with him growing into a beautiful bunny that gives gifts.

My favorite part of the book are the beautiful full page illustrations done by Mary Hildebrandt.  The illustrations are full of color and completely pull children into the story.  I love how the text isn't superimposed over the illustrations.  These attention grabbing illustrations are full of emotion, and tell the story all on their own, which with early readers is so important that they can look at the image and tell the story on their own before knowing how to read.  The emotions in the art also help children identify how the bunny is feeling, and can teach empathy.  "Look at the bunny here.  How do you think he feels?  How would you feel?  What could make him feel better?  What do you think of this?"

Craft Idea:  Aside from painting eggs with your kids have them paint kindness rocks and hide them to brighten someone's day.

I love painting rocks with my children, you can add words of inspiration or a message of kindness to them as well for others to find.

If you're having trouble coming up with some egg stuffing ideas you can add rocks to plastic eggs as well painting some for your children to keep or leave them unpainted for your little artist to paint.

I know for years The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter use to be a popular books for Easter, it's what many of us grew up reading and hearing around this time of year.  The story of Peter Rabbit tho isn't about Easter, or eggs.  The book is great for any time of the year.  We all know this book, Peter is a naughty rabbit who goes into Mr. McGregor's garden after his mama told him not to, and he find himself in some danger of the farmer, and the cat, and getting lost.  He of course gets home safe and his mom takes care of him, and puts him to bed while his siblings have a nice supper.

Grace Maccarone has taken The Tale of Peter Rabbit and continued it into an Easter story in her book Peter Rabbit's Happy Easter.
Published 2006 by Scholastic

I love how this book picks up right where the Tale of Peter Rabbit leaves off, it starts with Peter waking up the next morning feeling bad for not listening to his mama.  This makes the book both able to be read on it's own or part of a story time where it can follow the original story Beatrix Potter wrote.

The story is fun and engaging, while the writing is simple to keep the attention of young readers.  The story is super cute with how the eggs were collected, an accident paints them, then how they were hidden.  I love that this story comes out and says "you should not take what isn't yours."  This lesson is very important for children.

The illustrations in this more recent story stay very close to those we grew up with in the original story.  This is because David McPhail did the illustrations for both books.  They are colorful, and detailed and tell the story.  They engage the children and keep their attention.  I love that in the second book there is more humor in the illustrations and made the children (my children) laugh and talk about what was happening.



Craft Idea:  To go along with using eggs collected from chicken, save your egg shells (wash them out) and fill them with paint and use the eggs to paint with.  A couple years ago I tried it out with my children.  The Easter bunny left paint and canvas for each girl and I saved egg shells and they had fun throwing the eggs full of paint at the canvas.



My youngest has always love Lift-the-Flap books and she has come across two books that she loves and we have read over and over:

Dora's Rainbow Egg Hunt
I love books that have children's favorite TV show character's in them.  I think they draw young children to them and make them want to read their book.  Dora has long been a favorite in our house.
Dora's Rainbow Egg Hunt goes through the colors of the rainbow (leaving out indigo) as they collect Easter Eggs of each color. As with all Dora books children get an introduction to Spanish.  Each flap they lift has something of the color under it "A yellow snake. Una culebra amarilla." The child keeps lifting flaps until they find the hidden egg "The blue egg. El huevo azul." The sturdy board book pages are great for wear and tear, and this book is shorter than most of the Dora stories we have read which is nice for children who have short attention spans.  The only down side to this book besides not including all seven color of the rainbow is that many of the flaps are tiny so the text on those tiny flaps is even smaller!

Craft Idea: To go off the colors they children learn with Dora take plastic eggs and have the child name the color and help you glue them together and make a Easter Egg door wreath.

If you don't have plastic eggs or want to do something different you can also cut out egg shapes and have the child color them in and glue them together to form a wreath.


The Easter Bunny left us what is my favorite lift-the-flap Easter book two or three years ago:
  Peter Cottontail's Easter Surprise
Written by: Joseph R. Ritchie
Illustrated by: Lydia Halverson
Published by CandyCane Press copywrite 2006

This is another sturdy board book and unlike Dora the flaps you lift up are large and thicker.  These differences has made the book I found at a thrift store last the past two or three years with much use and still is in great shape.

In this Easter Surprise book we are finding what Peter has left for each animal, so it's a different take than the other books I've listed here. 

As we meet each animal, we are told about them and get to guess what is in their egg.  The short pose is easy to read and rhymes. I love that there are new words introduced.  Instead of keeping the wording super simple like many board books do there are more colorful words to increase vocabulary.  "Happy Jack is on the prowl," not just hunting.  Each page reads like a fun adventure poem.  I've read this book at least 7 times this past week and it's still fun to read out loud.  I also want to mention how creative the gifts are that are inside the eggs.  Coconut covered cheese balls for the mouse.

Lydia Halverson has done a great job with the illustrations, so the child's attention stays on the page and helps them follow along with the story.  The little image of Peter Cottontail looking out of the text box to spy on the animal finding his gift is a cute touch.  Colorful and engaging. This book is one your little one will love for years to come.


I hope you all have a very HAPPY EASTER!