Two Eggs, Please.

This wonderful and simple story teaches that people from all different walks of life may look different and have different jobs and like things differently yet we are really all the same. I have used this book with children ages 2 to 9. I often bring real eggs and we write down all things that make them different, size, shape, color, bumpy, etc. and then crack them open to see they are all the same on the inside. Follow this book with Julius Lester's Let's Talk About Race and you have a fabulous lesson on equality.

TWO EGGS, PLEASE is a well illustrated way to teach children how things can be the same yet different. The book contains very few words, most of them simple, and would be ideal for beginning readers. What really makes this book memorable are the outstanding pictures done in watercolor and ink. Rendered in soft shapes and bright colors, this is the story of a diner visited late at night by a host of animals. One by one they take a seat at the counter and, in varying fonts, place an order with the fox waitress for two eggs. No one orders a two egg omelet, but they do request their eggs sunny-side up, over easy, scrambled, hard- and soft-boiled, poached, fried, raw, and on a roll. Collectively, they think they've each ordered something "different" but "the same." To help demonstrate this, the grizzly grill cook even uses two different kinds of eggs in preparing their orders. In the end, everyone enjoys a lovely, two egg breakfast.

A late night diner gets a lot of traffic in the wee hours of the morning. Everyone that enters orders two eggs, but how they want their eggs prepared is different. The fox waitress serves a rhino two sunny-side up eggs (and coffee--I noticed everyone gets coffee), a stork two scrambled eggs and a python two raw eggs, plus many of the other varieties of prepared eggs. The illustrations are fun and colorful, the text is easy to read and simple, and the story itself is a good springboard for discussing eggs, differences, eating out or breakfast.