Egg Must Hatch

A child finds an egg, lying in snow and ice. Much too cold for an egg, of course – and so the child sets off to find someone to hatch it. The child travels around the world, calling on all sorts of animals. But no animal is willing or able to. Then, just as the child is about to give up…

Mariken Jongman and Marieke ten Berge have created a lively and refreshing picture book story. The reader is carried along by the dreamily coloured landscapes created by Ten Berge, and by the child’s increasingly desperate quest. A quest that is also very amusing, as when a snake would rather swallow the egg whole than hatch it, or a duck turns out to be much too small, or a whale just cannot sit on it, while an elephant could but had better not try, and so on. And as befits a picture book, the end is heart-warming. This book is the first that Jongman and Ten Berge made together, and it instantly makes one long for more.