Hatch (Heidi Cooper Smith, CSIRO Publishing)

Australia has many fascinating egg-laying animals. Hatch introduces readers to a wide variety, from turtles, frogs and crocodiles to tarantulas, cicadas and monotremes such as echidnas and platypuses. The book explores the incredible variety in the types and number (clutch) of eggs these animals lay, how they care for them and how dependent their babies are once they hatch. Heidi Cooper Smith’s digital watercolour illustrations are soft, colourful and engaging, rendering important details of the animals’ habitats, such as a brush turkey’s leaf-litter mound, a tawny frogmouth’s precarious stick nest, and a mud crab’s murky mangrove. The main story takes readers from one animal and egg to the next, while Cooper Smith (Odd Sock Sid, Six Sleepy Mice) gives details about clutch size, hatching time and other facts, including nest-building materials and what the hatchlings are called at the end of the book, to encourage readers to go back and spot more egg-laying animals in the illustrations. One lovely detail is a series of unhatched eggs in the front of the book that can be matched up to the baby animals at the back, including both types of puggle (baby echidnas and platypuses) — the cutest baby animal name ever! With its mix of narrative, illustrations, educational text and glossary, Hatch is suitable for both preschool and primary school-aged children.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Angela Meyer is an author and lecturer in writing and publishing at RMIT. She is a former publisher and bookseller. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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