Although Easter has come and gone, I still managed to read an Easter book to my daughter’s daycare children not too long afterward.  Their excitement about Easter eggs was still alive so I read the book The Best Easter Prize to the four 3 and 4 year olds.

The Story

After getting ready for church on Easter Sunday in her best white tights, pretty pink dress, shiny shoes and pretty new Easter bonnet the young nameless girl in this story heads off to church with her family.

After church all of the children ran outside for the hundred-egg hunt.  The fifteen minute time limit seemed like plenty of time for the girl to collect the most eggs and win the prize but she had a hard time finding any.

Finally when she managed to collect fourteen she was sure she would be the winner.  Seeing her friend Abigail sad because she couldn’t find any eggs she decides to share with her.  She didn’t win the big prize but when the winner, Candace, saw what a good friend she was she shared her first place chocolate bunny prize with everyone.
 
The Illustrations
 
The illustrations look to be done in watercolors and cover each page edge to edge.  They are simple yet colorful and are done to look natural as well.

The text is a medium black font that is placed where it can be easily seen whether sitting together or holding up the book and reading to a classroom.

 
Our Feelings
 
Although this book has a very slight religious undertone, it is so minimal that I really was not concerned about reading to the children in the daycare.  No specific religion was mentioned and other than saying that they sat in a pew and that they prayed it didn’t really talk very much about being at church.

I loved the lesson that this story taught in a very gentle way to the children.  While winning the prize would be great, being a good friend and sharing was much more important and I was able to talk with the four children I was reading to about this and what they would do.  Of course one of them said he would run and win the prize, we did talk about how he thought the sad girl felt and he said ‘well maybe I would share.’   

The illustrations were interesting and the best part of that was on the back cover we found a challenge that the children loved….find the 100 hidden Easter eggs in the book.  It took a bit, but we managed to find all of them!

I would recommend this book for children 3 years and up.  The story is simple and yet had a bit of mystery to what would happen next.  The fun of finding the 100 eggs makes it a book that children will have fun sitting and looking at on their own as well.
 
Nuts & Bolts
 
The Best Easter Prize was written by Kristina evans and illustrate by John Wallace.

Cartwheel Books, and imprint of Scholastic, published this 32 page paperback book in 2010 with a jacket price of $3.99 US and $4.99 CAN.

ISBN:  9780545051125

Recommended: Yes