The Stolen Egg

This tale of mistaken identity features one egg, one albatross and a string of five confused mothers. After scooping up an anonymous egg in her beak and transporting it across two seas, the albatross deposits it in another nest on another continent. Did she steal the egg? Or is it hers? When she is frightened away by a snake, a succession of African animals temporarily adopt the orphaned ovoid only to discover it is too big, too small, too hard or too round to be theirs. Finally, the albatross reclaims the embryonic offspring, carries it back across the oceans and drops it at the feet of its father--just in time for it to hatch as a penguin. Although maintaining the mystery, sparse textual details and missing visual clues confuse the story's initial premise. However, the close perspective of brisk earth-tone illustrations heightens the drama of the repetitive ``Somebody was coming . . . ''--providing the tale with some page-turning energy. Although Vyner employs general names for indigenous species (crocodile), older readers will appreciate their more specific and colorful monikers (the Emperor Penguin, the Gaboon Viper), profiled in a glossary at the book's conclusion. Ages 3-8. (May)