TAP! TAP! the egg cracked

by Keith Faulkner

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Alice Reedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tap! Tap!...the egg cracked... is a playful lift-the-flap book, which could provide an excellent cross-curricular link to the primary science curriculum. It follows the journey of a mother hen who has lost the first egg she had ever laid. During her search to find her egg, the mother hen encounters lots of other eggs and discovers the different types of creatures that they contain. The other eggs come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours; the creatures that hatch range from other birds to alligators, platypuses, snakes and turtles. This provides an excellent way to introduce children to the idea of where different animals come from. It may surprise and entertain children to learn about all the different types of living things that lay eggs. This could easily be used to support a science lesson about the categorisation of animals, as laying eggs that contain offspring is a key way to identify types of animals and differentiate them from others.

Using children’s literature as a way to introduce scientific concepts provides a more gentle and familiar setting for new information. Children immediately have an accessible context for the new learning that they are expected to understand. Tap! Tap!...the egg cracked...uses a typically repetitive structure and frequent refrains; these are techniques that will make the book more memorable and enjoyable to read for students. This in turn should help them to more easily recall the different animals within the book that lay eggs, it employs a more entertaining and contextual approach than attempting to learn them from a list in a science lesson.

The varied, colourful drawings are aesthetically pleasing and could also be used to help children to begin to consider the different types of environments that animals use as their habitats; for example an eagle is shown in a nest and a platypus is depicted emerging from freshwater onto a river bank with overhanging vegetation.

Overall Tap! Tap!...the egg cracked... may not be the most unusual and unique of stories, but the book has great value in terms of introducing key scientific concepts to young children.

[Danelle Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book would be appropriate for grades K-5th grade. It has awesome pictures and pop-ups and is written very well. The book is about a chicken that has lost her egg and goes looking for it, but underneath the story line the book addresses different wildlife that lay eggs. This would be a great book to use for a science lesson or just story time for the lower grades.