An Extraordinary Egg Hatches Something Unexpected

There are people who go through life looking for something amazing in every circumstance – and consequently finding it. This is an exciting way to live, since you never know what small discovery may be around the corner. It’s the outlook of Jessica, one of the three frogs in Leo Lionni’s An Extraordinary Egg, and this zest leads her to bring home a big pebble that turns out to be something even more interesting: an egg.

The egg, says Jessica’s know-it-all friend Marilyn, is a chicken’s egg. When it hatches, they all call it “the chicken”, but most young readers will probably already be aware of the fact that the creature that has emerged from the shell is not a chicken. Just hearing the frogs repeatedly call an alligator a chicken is a source of some amusement. Along with that humor, there is a sweetness to this story as the frogs so readily accept the newcomer, who manages to be independent from birth.

I enjoy Lionni’s painting style, which tends to be fairly simple, using basic shapes and colors to convey character and emotion in a minimalist way. His most impressive effort in terms of doing a lot with very little is little blue and little yellow, in which the main characters are a blue dot and a yellow dot. Though they have no facial features, they feel very expressive, and we always know which one is which, right up until the end. Here, the paintings are vibrant and expressive, but when the three frogs are together, I can’t tell the difference among them.

That’s partly because they’re all green, with the same eyes – white circles with black circles inside – and the same smiles. Their limbs look the same, and all three of them have brown shading. What’s more, after the egg shows up, they all start to act pretty similar. In the beginning, Jessica is an oddball by virtue of her exuberance, but all three of them find “the chicken” exciting. Jessica’s insistence upon enthusiasm finally led to something genuinely extraordinary, and now Marilyn and August have improved outlooks as a result.

It does seem a little strange that from that point in the story forward, the differences established at the beginning no longer seem in effect. The only difference is that Jessica can’t even begin to guess what this egg contains, whereas Marilyn and August think they have it all figured out. So there is a little lesson in there about being too cocky, even though, at the end of the story, they still believe that it was a chicken that hatched out of that egg.

Still, An Extraordinary Egg is a cute story for the 4 to 8 crowd. It’s a tale that celebrates friendship and looking upon the world with fresh eyes, expecting something exceptional every day. With that mindset, an extraordinary discovery is likely to be just around the corner.

Leo Lionni Talks Colors and Tolerance in Little Blue and Little Yellow

Illustrations in children’s books don’t have to be complicated to be effective. One book that always springs to mind when I think of simple illustrations is Shel Silverstein’s The Missing Piece, along with its sequel, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O. With just a couple of basic shapes, Silverstein managed to weave a thought-provoking story. While Silverstein used geometry to tell his tale, Leo Lionni’s little blue and little yellow utilizes knowledge of the color spectrum. Instead of how shapes fit together, the focus is on how two colors, when combined, form a new color.

Lionni’s story is a very simple one that nonetheless can be read on multiple levels. Little blue and little yellow are best friends. Each is represented by a large dot of paint, while other dots represent their classmates and bigger blobs represent their parents. There are no details to be found in any of the illustrations; it’s just stretches of color. The characters are circles or ovals, and various locations are also indicated by blobs of paint. Most pages have a white background, but for dramatic emphasis, one page is black and another is red. It’s not much to work with, but alongside Lionni’s simple narration, these colors sing.

The most dramatic moment comes when, after some time apart, little blue finds little yellow, and both are so overjoyed that they hug each other to the point that each becomes green. Looking at that series of pictures, one could almost swear that they are smiling. Complications come in when they return home to their parents, who no longer recognize them because they are green.

What follows is both a lesson in color mixing and a reflection on how two people’s love for one another has the capacity to change both in dramatic ways. As such, it also becomes a lesson in tolerance, encouraging parents to accept their children’s friends and be open to the ways in which that friendship might alter their worldview.

Like most of the books I’ve been reading lately, little blue and little yellow is a find from 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. Though I’ve encountered Lionni before, I hadn’t heard of this book. It’s been around for 50 years, and in this anniversary edition, there’s a note from Lionni, who died in 1999, explaining the genesis of his idea. That recollection, centering on a train trip with his granddaughters, is almost as sweet as the story itself. For young and old alike, I recommend this colorful little book.