Small Speckled Egg - (Start Small, Think Big) by Mary Auld (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Small Speckled Egg starts with an egg. The fluffy chick that emerges is an Arctic tern - one of the most remarkable creatures on the planet. The story of her life is told clearly and carefully in a way that builds understanding."--

Book Synopsis

Start Small, Think Big sets readers on a journey of discovery, beginning with small miracles of life and connecting them to the big picture of our natural world. Each book features a large fold-out illustration on the final pages.

Small Speckled Egg starts with an egg. The fluffy chick that emerges is an Arctic tern - one of the most remarkable creatures on the planet. The story of her life is told clearly and carefully in a way that builds understanding. The illustrations draw the reader into the tern's world to watch her grow from chick to juvenile, and marvel at her long migration from the top of the world to the bottom and back again. It's a journey she does every year of her life. The story ends with her meeting her lifelong mate and the 50 adorable chicks they have in their lifetime. To make this a truly special elementary-science picture book, there is a big fold-out map; an illustrated lifecycle; big- thinking stats and facts, and an I-Spy to take young readers back into in the book to find the polar animals. This book also features a die cut hole in the cover.

Review Quotes

"Welcoming and engaging, the Start Small, Think Big series does a particularly nice job of tracing the life cycle of flora and fauna, while also placing it within a larger environmental context. . . . feature a bold sentence or two per page that conveys the general plot-progression for the youngest readers, while additional text blocks offer older readers more facts about the setting and journey taking place. The real wow-factor appears in each book's final spread, which folds out into a four-page display that includes a map, an illustrated recap of the plant or animal life cycle, an "I-Spy" feature that sends kids back through the book, and a "Think Big!" box of big-picture facts. --Julia Smith, Booklist

"An introduction to Arctic terns, the animals with the longest migratory routes on Earth. Between a die-cut front cover hole exposing the titular egg on the title page and a foldout map at the end, a tern describes its life cycle from hatchling to parent as, in smaller type, the author fills in details about diet, predators, behavior, and the annual migratory cycle that takes these birds from Arctic to Antarctic regions and back. . . Specific but easily absorbable facts combined with illustrations that reward closer (and repeated) looks make this book particularly appealing for younger readers, alone or in groups. More than enough verbal and visual appeal to fly off shelves." -Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Mary Auld is an award-winning author for children. She writes on music, art, and science and hopes to inspire young readers with her own huge enthusiasm and passion for these subjects. Her latest book, Masterpieces in Pieces, shortlisted for the UK School Library Association Information Book Award 2023. How to Build an Orchestra, produced in association with the London Symphony Orchestra, gave rise to a spin-off series that started with A Little Book of the Orchestra: The Violin. She divides her time between Nottinghamshire, England and France.

Anna Terreros-Martin is a young British author-illustrator and master's graduate of the Cambridge School of Art. Coincidentally, she has two books about birds: Small, Speckled Egg and her picture book Can You See the Stars Tonight? In 2022, she published her debut picture book, The Friendly Mammoth. She lives near Nottingham.