The Egg Keeper

by F. Louise Smith, Robin (Illustrator)

Overview

When Nannie passes a beloved painted egg on to her granddaughter, the heirloom comes with a responsibility to remember the family's stories. The egg helps the granddaughter recall special times with Nannie like hanging noodle-dough rounds from clotheslines in the kitchen, making lima-bean sandwiches, learning to embroider, and catching lightning bugs. When the granddaughter becomes a grandmother herself, she wonders if it's time to pass on the egg to her own grandchildren so they can become the keepers of memories.

A poignant, nostalgic book about the power of memory and the unbreakable bond of family, The Egg Keeper will inspire you to record your own precious family memories that helped you become the person you are today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781525562396
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	11/13/2020
Pages:	56
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.15(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

F. Louise Smith is a retired elementary-school teacher who taught in both private schools and public schools. She was a reading specialist for thirty years, helping children read and write creative stories, and has a collection of several thousand children's books. She lives in Catonsville, Maryland, with her husband, Wayne. They have one adult son, Ryan, and two grandchildren, Nolan and Bayla.

Editorial Reviews

2021-01-04
A grandmother bequeaths a decorated heirloom egg to her granddaughter in this debut illustrated children’s book.

Each Easter, Nannie allows her granddaughter to hold the orange-and-blue wooden egg with a yellow flower that her old friend Helga brought from “the old country.” “Painted all over,” the egg needs a keeper, and the narrator gets it and its wooden box early in childhood. She fondly recalls further traditions passed down by her grandmother, including a recipe for tomato soup with “thick” and “chewy” handmade noodles. Episodic adventures on the beach, days waiting for the ice cream truck, and nighttime hunting for fireflies make up Smith’s pastiche of an idyllic childhood and an education focused on practical tasks, supervised by Nannie and her gnarled hands. Robin’s richly detailed, soft-tone watercolor and pencil illustrations add visual interest to the engaging recollections, from blue teacups, decorative red metal cardinals, and yellow sunflowers to noodles hanging on clotheslines and the vivid mid-20th-century Americana food on the table at Easter (“Ham, turkey, too much celery seed in the coleslaw, chocolate cake with jelly beans on top”). The mostly beaming light-skinned children look a little mawkish; there is no hint of events in the world beyond a pleasant suburban life. Lengthy text on each page makes for a gently paced, quiet, leisurely trip down Memory Lane—until the narrator becomes a grandmother herself, and readers are advised to “remember the special, extraordinary things you do with your family.” A two-page spread of the narrator as an older woman standing across from her grandmother is affecting, as is her observation that “my hands are gnarling...my back is hunching.” Endpapers include notebook-lined blank pages, presumably to write stories, and a blank egg to decorate.

An enjoyable, moving, and sentimental reflection on inheritance and family history.

Kirkus Reviews