Four children hunt for eggs on Easter Sunday on their grandmom's homestead. When Katy finds beautifully painted eggs in the attic, Grandmom shows everyone how to make an egg tree. They repeat this tradition the next year, and it brings joy to the whole community.

Four children hunt for eggs on Easter Sunday on their grandmom's homestead. When Katy finds beautifully painted eggs in the attic, Grandmom shows everyone how to make an egg tree. They repeat this tradition the next year, and it brings joy to the whole community.

A story of a Pennsylvania Dutch Easter celebration, which emphasizes the tradition of the Easter egg tree.

Spending their first Easter at Grandmom's farm in the country, Katy and Carl join in the Easter Egg Hunt with their cousins, but find that they're not very successful at tracking down those brightly colored treats. Then Katy finds her way to the attic, where she discovers an old hatbox full of gorgeously decorated eggs, made by Grandmom when she was a little girl. Painted in traditional folk styles, these eggs are so lovely that the children ask to be taught how to create them themselves, and when they have learned the skill, create enough to make a gorgeous egg-tree...

Originally published in 1950, and awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1951, The Egg Tree is a lovely book, one which pairs an engaging story of Pennsylvania Dutch (German-American) Easter traditions with beautiful folk-art illustrations. Before picking the book up, I was unaware of the German Ostereierbaum (Easter Egg Tree) tradition, but apparently it is many centuries old, and was brought by German immigrants to the United States. Although I have some German ancestry on my father's side, this tradition is unknown in my family, so I was happy to learn of it. Apparently, the most well-known example of an Ostereierbaum is the one in Saalfeld, Thuringia, which is decorated every year with thousands of eggs:



In any case, I found the story here sweetly appealing, enjoyed learning about a new-to-me Easter tradition, and found the folk-style artwork beautiful. Recommended to picture-book readers looking for Easter stories, or for tales with a Pennsylvania Dutch cultural backdrop. ( )

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