WHICH CAME FIRST? The chicken or the egg? Simple die-cuts magically present transformation-- from seed to flower, tadpole to frog, caterpillar to butterfly.

The acclaimed author of Black? White! Day? Night! and Lemons Are Not Red gives an entirely fresh and memorable presentation to the concepts of transformation and creatiity. Seed becomes flower, paint becomes picture, word becomes story--and the commonplace becomes extraordinary as children look through and turn the pages of this novel and winning book.
荣获美国凯迪克银奖，是一本关于转变的图画书。从蛋变成鸡、蝌蚪变成青蛙、种子变成花朵、毛毛虫变成蝴蝶；它也是关于创造的图画书…颜料可以绘制图画，文字可以创造故事，而平凡也可以创造奇迹。 适合2-4岁阅读。

从蛋变成鸡、蝌蚪变成青蛙、种子变成花朵、毛毛虫变成蝴蝶……。这是一本关于转变的图画书。但它不仅仅是一个故事，还蕴含了对“生命起源和变化”的审美感知。
儿童美育中最重要的是对早期审美感知力的发掘与培养，其中对美的视觉能力是比“看”更高层次的“有意识地看”。
In another nimble page-turner, Seeger (Black? White! Day? Night!) toys with die-cuts and strategically paired words. She introduces a chicken-or-egg dilemma on her book’s cover, picturing a plump white egg in a golden-brown nest. Remove the die-cut dust jacket, and a hen appears on the glossy inner cover. The eggshell, thickly brushed in bluish-white and cream, also serves as the chicken’s feathers. This “first/then” pattern is repeated (“First the egg/ then the chicken./ First the tadpole/ then the frog”), with a die-cut on every other page. By flipping a page, readers see the cutout in two contexts. For instance, when an ovoid shape is superimposed on a white ground, it’s an egg; on a yolk-yellow ground, it’s the body of a baby chick. Seeger lines up the recto and verso of every sheet, maintaining a casual mood with generous swabs of grassy greens, sky blues and oxide yellows on canvas. Given the exuberant imagery, the occasional cutout (like the fingernail-size seed of a blowsy peony-pink flower) looks none too impressive. But if minuscule die-cuts seem barely worth the trouble, they do imply the potential in humble sources. Seeger’s clever conclusion brings all the elements together in an outdoor scene that returns readers to the opening: “First the paint/ then the picture… / First the chicken/ then the egg!”
在有趣的洞洞中孩子会发现图像构成和变化的“秘密”、事物之间的奇妙联系。你看，同一个洞洞既是“鸡蛋”又可以是“小鸡”的身子；既是“毛毛虫”又可以是“蝴蝶”的一部分……。在这些“部分”与“整体”的变化中，孩子感知了生命的成长和变化，理解了由“洞洞”构成的更丰富的意义，这就是“有意识地看”的能力。