Hatch and Match: A Springtime Seek-and-Find Book

by Ruth Paul, Ruth Paul (Illustrator)

Overview

Have fun with colors, patterns, and counting in a search-and-match adventure filled with vibrant, colorful illustrations and a bouncy rhyming text.

Every morning, same but new,
hear the COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!
Hens jump down, stretch their legs.
Can you help them find their eggs?

Amid a kaleidoscope of colors, chickens with spots, stripes, and zigzags are scritching and scratching and looking for their eggs. There are eggs in a haystack, under a tree, inside a barn, and even tucked in a shoe. Who can help the hens find the eggs that match them before they hatch into chicks? From award-winning New Zealand author-illustrator Ruth Paul comes an energetic concept book that doubles as a celebration of same-but-different creatures everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536249804
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/25/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Ruth Paul is an award-winning writer and illustrator of picture books and a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate. Her books have been published internationally, and she has twice won the Picture Book Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. She is also a champion of her local community of Makara, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, where she lives and looks after a large native forest project.

Ruth Paul lives in an off-the-grid, straw-bale house on a farm just outside Wellington, New Zealand. As well as writing and illustrating children’s picture books, Ruth is the mother of two boys and is actively involved in her local community.

Ruth started writing and illustrating her own picture books in 2004. Hedgehog’s Magic Tricks is her first picture book for Candlewick Press. “I had initially written a much longer and more complex story about these characters. But when I drew them, it seemed they would appeal to a very young audience. So eventually, my long first draft turned into a number of smaller individual stories, each focusing on one character. They’re an unlikely bunch, but they make me laugh.”

Ruth loves being both author and illustrator. “A little girl once thought I was an author and an alligator,” Ruth says. “I smile with my mouth shut now.”

Editorial Reviews

A bright, busy picture book gives young children a chance to practice their observational skills by seeking and finding gaily decorated things.
—The Wall Street Journal

A terrific way for kids to count chickens before they hatch—and practice other skills besides.
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-10-12
Seeking an eggs-cellent attention grabber? Look no further!

Narrated in rollicking verse, this exuberant Australian import offers multiple learning opportunities for the very young: color recognition, practice honing visual-literacy skills, vocabulary enrichment, rhyme appreciation, and development of early math skills, including counting, matching, and sorting. All this while early learners are having a grand time helping hens find the eggs that match their own colors and vivid designs. An unseen narrator invites kids to get in on the hens’ high-spirited search. Will they want to? You bet. This jolly offering will have kids eagerly engaged, right up to the satisfying conclusion. Onomatopoeic sound effects are well incorporated into the text and visuals and are rendered in large, boldfaced capitals (“CLUCK, CLUCK, SQUAWK!”). The textured, brilliantly colored digital illustrations are a major draw: They look as if they were created on a grained background and have an embroidered appearance. The opening scene—“Chickens roosting in the tree”—resembles a piece of Eastern European folkloric art. The final message of the story is perhaps the best part: Chickens are “same but different…Just the same as you and me.” Background characters are racially diverse.

A terrific way for kids to count chickens before they hatch—and practice other skills besides.(Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews