An Extraordinary Egg

Author: Leo Lionni
Plot Summary: It’s an extraordinary day on Pebble Island for three frogs when one of them discovers a beautiful white egg. They’ve never seen a chicken egg before, but they’re sure that’s what this must be. So when the egg hatches and out crawls a long green, scaly creature, they naturally call it . . . a chicken!
Posted In: Aesthetics, Epistemology

Discussion Questions

• How do the words and drawings together tell the story?
• What feelings do the drawings create? How do drawings create feelings?
• Would the story be the same without the drawings? The words?
• Why does Jessica believe her fellow frog when told the alligator is a chicken?
• Why does she continue to believe it even when she meets the mother alligator?
• Often we believe we have knowledge because of testimony from other people – can such information be knowledge?
• Do the words of other people give us a basis for believing something?
• How do we determine which testimony to trust? Does it depend on how the people speaking to us know what they think they know?
• How often do we hold onto our beliefs even in the face of evidence that they are not true?