Favorite Easter Books
Our favorite Easter books are of the bunny-and-egg variety, with the glorious exception of Brian Wildsmith's The Easter Story. We own all of these (except for the Max and Ruby books), but we also like to look on the Easter shelves at the library: it seems to me that the best Easter books are the older ones.
The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward; pictures by Marjorie Flack (1939). A classic. I loved this book when I was a little girl, especially the spot illustrations of Cottontail's twenty-one children doing the housework.
The Easter Egg Artists by Adrienne Adams (1976). "There are Abbotts and there are Abbotts. These Abbotts are rabbits. The rabbit Abbotts make the designs on Easter eggs."
The Bunny Who Found Easter by Charlotte Zolotow (1959); re-illustrated by Helen Craig (1998). Lovely to look at and read aloud; lots of seasonal details.
The Birds' Gift: A Ukrainian Easter Story by Eric Kimmel; illustrated by Katya Krenina. A folktale about the origin of pysanky; gorgeous illustrations.
The Story of the Easter Bunny by Katherine Tegen; illustrated by Sally Anne Lambert (2005). The kids really like it!
Max Counts His Chickens by Rosemary Wells (2007). So much nicer than Max's Chocolate Chicken (the one where he steals the chicken and eats it all up). In this one he and Ruby are hunting for hot pink peep-like chicks all around the house. "Chick! Chick! Chick!" says Max.
And The Good Master, written and illustrated by Kate Seredy (1935), Chapter 4, "Easter Eggs." I happily read this middle-grade novel and its sequel, The Singing Tree (A Newbery Honor book), many times; this year I read the Easter chapter, always my favorite, to my own little ones.
Happy Easter! Happy spring!