Celebrate! Easter Books for the Whole Family

Easter is March 31, just 2 weeks away. Of all the holidays, Easter is my favorite. For me, it’s a quiet holiday of church, family and chocolate. And then it’s spring. What’s not to like?

I have 2 weeks of books for you. Here is the first batch to get you started.

FICTION

 April Adventure by Ron Roy

This book is part of the Calendar Mysteries series, by the author of the A to Z Mysteries series. Bradley, Brian, Lucy, and Nate are the younger siblings of the characters in the A to Z series. They are on an Easter egg hunt. They easily find the 12 plastic eggs but finding the special golden eggs is when the real mystery starts.

 10 Easter Egg Hunters by Janet Schulman, illustrated by Linda Davick

The rhyming text tells of 10 kids on an Easter egg hunt. Each page gives a clue as to where the eggs are hiding. But look carefully at the illustrations and you’ll find the hidden eggs before the 10 kids do.

 Fancy Nancy’s Elegant Easter by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser

Fancy Nancy and her best friend Bree are getting ready for an Easter party. Everything is, of course, fancy. This is a lift-the-flap book.

 Happy Easter, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff, illustrated by Felicia Bond

Mouse, from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, finds Easter eggs all over the house. The color words (yellow, red…) in the text are the appropriate colors, making this a good book for early preschoolers.

  What am I? Easter by Anne Margaret Lewis, illustrated by Tom Mills

Each left page of this book has a riddle, such as, I am smooth and brown. The Easter Bunny leaves me in your basket. The right page shows a hint of the answer, covered mostly by a flap. Not terribly challenging, but fun.

 Easter Parade by Irving Berlin, illustrated by Lisa McCue

The text is based on the song from the 1930s. Anyone old enough to remember the song will have to sing it out. The illustrations, based on a bunny family, are charming and funny.

 There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick! by Lucille Colandro, illustrated by Jared Lee

I wonder how many books are based on the old song, There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly? This one has an old lady swallowing all things you might find in an Easter basket. The pictures perfectly match the foolishness of the text.

 Bently & Egg by William Joyce

Bently is a young and musical frog who gets roped into egg-sitting for his friend Kack Kack the duck. Bently is not very impressed by the plain white egg so he paints it with a beautiful design. This makes it look like an Easter egg, which causes a string of adventures. This picture storybook is very sweet.

NONFICTION

 Easter around the World by Shannon Knudsen, illustrated by David L. Erickson

Although I've often read of how Christmas is celebrated around the world, I’d never really thought of how Easter is celebrated in different countries. This book tells of the Easter customs in 8 different countries, including Sweden, Ethiopia and Mexico. I learned a lot!

 Fun-To-Make Crafts for Easter edited by Tom Daning

I had great fun looking through this book. There is a wide variety of cards, decorations, art projects and jewelry. The projects use all sorts of materials, lots of them one you’d have lying about the house.

The First Easter: The Story of Why We Celebrate Easter by Carol Heyer (sorry, no link)

Starting with Jesus'birth, this book is a simple retelling of Jesus' life and the events leading up to the first Easter. The painted illustrations beautifully support the text. It would make a terrific read-aloud.

Come back next week for more fun Easter books!

Gail