The great big Aussie Easter egg hunt by Colin Buchanan

Ill. by Chris Kennett. Scholastic, 2012.
Easter time in Australia sees all the animals racing across the land to find their Easter eggs. In rhyming lines, we have the kangaroos scratching around Uluru with the gecko, and hooting with bandicoot at Kakadu, while the eagle spreads eggs from high at Alice Springs. All the iconic places around Australia are included, along with many well known animals, so that teachers could use the book as a fun read, using a map of Australia to pinpoint each landmark mentioned, introducing a class to the many places they may have heard of but are not sure where they are. The list of animals too, is a useful tool again for the classroom, with animals not all would know, but the range gives a neat introduction to a few lessons about Australian animals.
The accompanying CD could be used in the classroom to sing along with, pointing out the places on the map as the song is sung, or small groups may like to learn it to present the map and the places to the class. The spirited illustrations by Chris Kennett could be used as a base for the classes' own drawings of Australian animals, or be copied to do a show and tell of animals for recognition purposes.
In this Year of Reading, this book is a fine adjunct to the many books already listed on their website about journeys around Australia to match the Alison Lester book, Are we there yet?. And this could be added to Buchanan's other books along a familiar theme, Fair dinkum Aussie Christmas, Fair dinkum Aussie Easter and Santa's Aussie mix-up.
Fran Knight