The Backward Easter Egg Hunt

by Meadow Rue Merrill

Six-year-old Molly can't wait for Aunt Jenny's famous Easter egg hunt at Lantern Hill Farm. But this year something's different. Instead of hiding eggs filled with prizes, Aunt Jenny gives the children empty eggs to fill! With a fun rhyming list, Molly and her friends embark on a scavenger hunt to fill their empty eggs with items that remind them of Easter. This interactive story introduces children to Jesus' death and resurrection and shares how much God loves us!

24 pages, Board book

Published March 1, 2019

About the author

Meadow Rue Merrill is an award-winning Maine journalist and the author of the inspirational memoir "Redeeming Ruth: Everything Life Takes, Love Restores." Meadow began her career as a reporter for The Times Record, a daily newspaper in Brunswick, Maine, covering shipbuilding, small-town politics, and education. Over the following eight years, she regularly corresponded for The Boston Globe, while raising kids, mentoring young moms, and folding mountains of laundry. In 2006, she and her family adopted Ruth, an abandoned baby with profound disabilities from Uganda--an experience that changed her family and opened their hearts to other people with disabilities. Most recently, Meadow has written for The New York Times, Harvard University, and The Boston Sunday Globe Magazine. She also has regular columns with The Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest newspaper, and Down East magazine, where she is a contributing editor. Every week her inspirational blog and newspaper column "Faith Notes," reaches 25,000 readers. Meadow writes for children and adults from a little house in the big woods of midcoast Maine. All personal proceeds from "Redeeming Ruth" benefit orphans and people with disabilities in Uganda.

Reviews

[Michele Morin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conscientious parents struggle to incorporate cultural traditions with the sacred underpinnings of family holidays. Biblical stories of Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection hardly stand a chance against the lure of gifts and candy. But what if the light-hearted side of Easter could be harnessed in the service of cementing the story of real, live truth?

Meadow Rue Merrill invites families to Lantern Hill Farm where Aunt Jenny hosts a backward Easter egg hunt with rhymed clues that send kids scrambling and competing for the goal. When she brings them all back together again, it’s for an unveiling of God’s Big Story that’s been there in the hunt all along. The Backward Easter Egg Hunt Hardcover Picture Book (Ages 4-7) is fun for reading aloud or for Easter gift basketing, and it is also a heads up for parents who want to plan ahead for meaningful celebration of Resurrection Sunday and of the God who makes possible a new sparkly life in Christ!

[Annie Twitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so cute! I'm always a bit nervous with children's books about the Gospel stories because they can be so sappy and sticky and just UGH, and I'd rather just straight up read the Bible to the kiddos. At the same time, I want to share something that's in context for the kiddos - something they can relate to. I'm happy to say this one will stick around on my picture book shelf for a long time. It's fun, simple, and not too big or preachy or theologically ccmplex.