Best Easter Picture Books – Children Ages 4 to 8

Easter Books for Kids – Easter Egg Hunts, Easter Eggs, Easter Bunny

Apr 3, 2009 Renee Carver

The best Easter picture books for children ages 4 to 8 include stories about Easter egg hunts, decorating Easter eggs, and tales about the Easter Bunny and his origins.

Parents searching for great Easter children's books for kids ages 4 to 8 can find a variety of options in bookstores and the library. The best secular stories combine cute, lovely art with sweet and sometimes funny story lines to get children thinking in new ways about common Easter symbols and Easter traditions like hunting for Easter eggs, decorating Easter eggs, and being visited by the Easter bunny.

Easter Children's Picture Books – Easter Egg Hunts

For what is Little Duck searching in the Easter lift-the-flap book The Golden Egg by A.J. Wood [Chronicle Books, 2000]? A special egg that's made of gold. Little Duck does eventually find what she is looking for...or does she? Children even younger than four will enjoy the gently rhyming text and the soft pastel pictures full of spring animals and insects to point out. Best of all, each right-hand page in this lift-the-flap book flips open to reveal sparkly hidden Easter eggs in different colors.

Each charming picture in the search-and-find picture book The Best Easter Egg Hunt Ever by John Speirs [Cartwheel, 1997] depicts a different location that readers must search for tiny hidden Easter eggs and other Easter treats. The rebus text shows readers exactly what they are looking for, and older children will enjoy poring over each detailed scene to try to locate each Easter object. With adult help, younger children will have fun looking for the objects as well, though they may only make it through a couple of spreads before becoming fatigued.

Easter Children's Picture Books – Ideas for Decorating Easter Eggs

A sweet story about creativity and cooperation, The Best Easter Eggs Ever! by Jerry Smath [Cartwheel, 2003] tells how the Easter Bunny grows tired of painting all the Easter eggs and challenges his three bunny helpers to an Easter Egg Painting Contest. Each of the helper bunnies is inspired by a different sight (and children will enjoy pointing out each bunny's source of inspiration in the pictures), and they come up with three very different creative designs. The designs are so great, in fact, that the Easter Bunny ends up using all three!

The Easter Egg Farm by Mary Jane Auch [Holiday House, 1994] is another Easter story about an artist being inspired to create by what she sees, though in this case, the artist is a hen and the art is the multicolored eggs she begins to lay. Whatever Pauline is looking at when she lays her egg, that color/texture is repeated on the egg's shell, and soon technicolor chicks begin to hatch out! This story has a nice moral about the value of being different and (a theme shared by The Best Easter Eggs Ever!) how artists can be inspired by their surroundings.

The Easter Egg Artists by Adrienne Adams [Aladdin, 1991] is also about art and artists, but it is a quieter, more complicated story that may be more suited for older children. The rabbit Abbotts are a family of Easter egg artists, and Mother and Father worry that their son, Orson, will never learn to focus enough to help out with painting Easter eggs. However, once Orson experiences the pleasure of having an audience for his art, and once he is challenged by the task of painting unusual objects like the family car and trailer, a house, and a plane, he becomes motivated to grow into a great Easter egg artist.

Easter Picture Books for Children – Easter Bunny Stories

Children who enjoy poetry and are familiar with the classic Clement C. Moore poem "The Night Before Christmas" will like The Night Before Easter by Natasha Wing [Grosset & Dunlap, 1999]. This silly Easter parody narrates how the Easter Bunny visits a household, leaving hidden Easter eggs and treats behind.

As in the other Silly Tilly holiday books, in Lillian Hoban's Silly Tilly and the Easter Bunny [HarperCollins, 1989], the easily confused mole Silly Tilly once again forgets to remember an increasingly ridiculous series of things. This time, she is struggling to prepare for a visit from the Easter Bunny. Eventually she and the Easter Bunny do sit down together to enjoy Easter treats, though Tilly is wearing a flowerpot on her head for an Easter bonnet, and the Easter Bunny had to kick the door open to gain entrance to Tilly's house.

With lovely, detailed paintings and simple, descriptive lines of text, The Story of the Easter Bunny by Katherine Tegen [HarperCollins, 2005] tells how a little rabbit learns from an old couple how to make Easter baskets for children and eventually becomes the Easter Bunny. After reading this story, children may enjoy watching The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town, which offers another explanation for the origin of the Easter Bunny (Parents can read a review of this Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation Easter special.)

In addition to these Easter children's books, children may enjoy reading Easter picture books for kids starring popular children's book characters like the Berenstain Bears, Max & Ruby, and Little Critter. Families can also check out Easter books for babies and toddlers.

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Hunt Easter Eggs in a Search-and-Find Picture Book	Read Easter Picture Books About Easter Egg Artists	Read Easter Books About Easter Treats
Picture Books for Children – Easter Bunny Origins	Easter Picture Books for Kids About Gold Eggs