One hundred eggs are hidden in Brown Bear Wood, and not one of them is going to find itself. Bear pulls on his straw hat, picks up a basket, and sets off through the trees with a rabbit, a mouse, a squirrel and a bluebird already ahead of him. Every spread hides twenty, tucked into nests and knotholes, balanced on branches, half buried in the moss.

Rachel Piercey writes the whole hunt in rhyming couplets, so a grown up reads four lines and then stops while a small person leans in and counts. Freya Hartas fills the woodland behind the words: a bear serving cake at a table in a hollow trunk, an owl asleep on a branch, fawns nosing through the bluebells, a schoolroom carved into a stump where a squirrel teaches counting at an acorn chart while the class listens from toadstool seats. There is more on each page than one sitting can exhaust, which is the point.

Twelve thick board pages behind a coral patterned spine, built for the age that turns pages with a whole fist. Small enough at 7.5 by 6.5 inches to go in an Easter basket, sturdy enough to come back out every spring.

Two more of the same shelf: A Tale for Easter and The Easter Egg.