When she was two, my daughter’s favorite book was First the Egg. The author, Emmy-award winning artist Laura Vaccaro Seeger, will be familiar to many picture book aficionados; she has written a few well-loved favorites, including Lemons Are Not Red, Walter Was Worried, The Hidden Alphabet and Black? White! Day? Night! She’s also the creator of the loveable Dog and Bear. In First the Egg, Seeger continues with her trademark simple language and vibrant pictures to create an unforgettable story.

Seeger takes the age-old question, “What came first—the chicken or the egg?” and answers it with bold die cuts and illustrations. Each die cut is used twice, depicting a part of an image on one side of the page as well as another on the next page. Not only is this whimsical portrayal entertaining, it’s also educational. Each spread details a scientific life cycle found in nature. The first spread, featuring the text “First the egg” with a picture of an egg that flips to the page of a fuzzy chicken (where you’ll find the text, “Then the chicken.”), is only the beginning.

Vaccaro goes on to cover the cycles of flowers, frogs, and my daughter’s favorite, the butterfly. (Every time we went over that part she’d always ask where the caterpillar was hiding, even after I had explained it to her; then she moved on to questions like where did the wings come from, how did he grow them, and did they hurt?) Each illustration gives a vibrant depiction of seed to flower, tadpole to frog, caterpillar to butterfly.

After the cycles of nature are covered, Vaccaro moves on to the cycle of a story itself. “First the word…then the story,” she writes. She then follows it with the story’s illustration—which happens to have all of the previous natural elements—the chicken, frog, butterfly, and flower—in it. It’s a lovely way to tie together the imagination and the natural world; but the simple message alone is enough to delight young readers.

There’s also a surprise: when you take off the book’s dust jacket cover, a little white hen will be sitting in her nest on the back of the cover—the eggshell on the front serving as her feathers on the back. This clever little picture book is a fantastic edition to any children’s library, as well as a possible supplement to scientific study. It’s never too early to introduce kids to science—why not start with the chicken and the egg?