Review Detail

It's fun to look at the tiny peas, and search for things that give them personalities. There are hats, hairstyles, and accessories to set them apart, and even one pea wearing rabbit ears who appears on each page spread, hiding Easter eggs. My favorite was the miniature chocolate bunny, complete with celophane wrapping and a bow, that appears at the foot of an Easter basket. This difference also allow the peas to be somewhat diverse; there's a wide range of ages and peas wearing glasses and in wheelchairs, but of course, all of the peas are green!

The digitally rendered illustrations are in pretty pastel colors, with lots of pink, blue, and purple, with a fair amount of green not only in the grass outside where the eggs are hidden, but in the plastic Easter grass in the baskets, which is particularly well drawn. The book is a smaller size (8" by 8"), which would make it the perfect background for some candy and small board book or set of pencils in an Easter basket.

I was surprised to learn that Sadler's It's Not Being a Bunny is often the best selling picture book around Easter time, because my children never considered that a holiday book. Hap-Pea Easter is a good title for celebrating a nonreligious Easter, along with John and Oswald's The Good Egg, Dewdney's Llama Llama Easter Egg, Underwood and Rueda's Here Comes the Easter Cat, and the fantastic Pick a Perfect Egg by Toht and Jarvis'. When talking about Easter books, it's important to mention that Hayward and Flack's The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, a 1939 title which is still in print, has excellent life lessons about hard work and perseverance!