Eggs

Jerry Spinelli’s middle-grade literary fiction novel, Eggs (2007), follows the story of David and Primrose, two troubled children with complex parental situations and little supervision, as they navigate their conflicts with grief, friendship, and belonging. Eggs is Spinelli’s 27th full-length novel for children and young adults.

Jerry Spinelli is a celebrated author of children’s novels that present uncomfortable truths in a way that is accessible to younger readers. His critically acclaimed novel Maniac Magee won the Newbery Medal in 1991 and deals with racism and other serious social issues. With Eggs, Spinelli addresses themes like Friendship as a Substitute for Parental Comfort, Using Superstition to Cope with Grief, and The Tension between Rule-Following and Risk-Taking.

This guide refers to the 2022 Little, Brown and Company paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death.

Plot Summary

Nine-year-old David Limpert is new to town, having just moved in with his grandmother after his mother’s sudden death last year. She slipped on an unmarked wet floor and fell down the stairs, hitting her head. These days, David’s father works in another city, so he is only home on the weekends. David’s grandmother tries to take care of him. One day, she takes him to an Easter egg hunt and encourages him to make friends, but David is still grieving the loss of his mother, so he is sour towards his grandmother and rejects her attempts to help him.

Across town, 13-year-old Primrose wakes up in her new bedroom, a junker van in her yard that she has renovated into a small bedroom space. She has a house, but it is very small and she is forced to share a bedroom with her mother, who lives an unorthodox lifestyle as a fortune teller. Primrose is happy to have her own space now.

Meanwhile, David waits at the starting line for the egg hunt. He doesn’t want to be there. The other kids start before the horn sounds, but David never breaks the rules, so he starts later than everyone else and misses all the eggs. Wandering into the forest, he sees an egg on a pile of leaves. When he grabs the egg, he uncovers the face of a pretty girl whom he assumes to be dead. (The narrative will later reveal that the girl is Primrose; in this scene, she is whimsically pretending to be dead.) He tells her about his dead mother and shows her the memento that he keeps in his pocket. David goes back the next day to see if she is still there, but she isn’t.

He checks the news for word of a dead body, but there is nothing, and as time goes on, David forgets about the girl entirely for a few months. David holds onto hope that someday, if he follows enough rules, his mother will return. In the meantime, he refuses to watch the sun rise without her, because that’s what they were supposed to do together the morning after she died.

In the summer, David’s grandmother volunteers for story time at the library and brings David along, hoping that he will make friends. While his grandmother reads, David spots a young teen girl sleeping in the back row. He gets closer and recognizes her as the dead girl that he saw in the woods during the egg hunt. He starts screaming.

Primrose is startled by the screaming, but she recognizes David’s voice from the day when he told her his story in the forest. She gives him her mother’s business card and leaves. David follows the address to a small home that doubles as a psychic’s business front. There, he meets Primrose’s mother, Madam Dufee, who attempts to give him a reading, but Primrose catches her and intervenes.

Primrose and David quickly form a mutually antagonistic friendship in which they mock one another and poke at each other. Primrose treats David like a little brother. She takes him on her nightly adventures to scavenge the garbage on the curb for things to sell at the flea market. David is afraid of the dark, but he goes along with her anyway. They also visit the 24-hour stores and get coffee so that they can stay up later.

David enjoys sneaking out and defying his grandmother, but one night, he stays out so late that he almost sees the sunrise. He never wants to see it without his mother, and he secretly believes that if he doesn’t see it without her, she’ll come back.

David and Primrose also visit Refrigerator John, a kind man who lives in a house on the scrapyard. John fixes the broken things that Primrose finds to sell. When Primrose begins bringing David with her, John worries about the children’s habit of being out on the street all night, so he buys a television and some snacks to entice them into staying somewhere safe. His plan works, but he soon discovers that David and Primrose are a challenge to handle. They bicker with each other constantly, and sometimes their fights escalate to physical threats and harm. John does his best to stay out of their conflicts, unless he needs to intervene physically. One day, the fight gets ugly when David claims that Primrose’s mysteriously absent father could be the Waving Man—a well-known man in Philadelphia who waves at people at an intersection. Primrose is offended by the suggestion and attacks David. She then makes things worse when she makes a snide remark about David’s dead mother. This time, the children’s fight is so serious that John’s only choice is to distract them.

John tells them that he is starting a bait business and needs nightcrawlers. He teaches them how to catch the large worms and offers to pay them per worm. David and Primrose are successful at first, but when they both go after the same worm, another fight ensues. Infuriated, Primrose abandons David in the dark, leaving him screaming and crying for his mother. John retrieves David, and Primrose learns a lesson about David’s limits.

Having been made aware of Primrose’s beloved photo of her father, which she keeps on her dresser, David is startled when he comes across this same photo at a vendor’s booth at the local flea market. Realizing that the photo she loves is not really of her father, he decides to spare her feelings and never tell her what he knows. After David helps Primrose paint over her van windows, she rants about how much she wishes she had a normal mother. She also reveals that she goes to library story time to have the experience of someone reading her to sleep, but it has never worked. Now, as she clings to her photograph of her father, David realizes that he can never tell her what he knows.

Primrose wants to take David to a parent-child event at the library. (His grandmother had already invited him to his event, but he had declined her invitation.) Primrose prepares to pose as a mother, donning an adult’s outfit, makeup, and her mother’s fortune-telling wig. David goes along with her plan, but Primrose’s overbearing, motherly behavior angers him, and he storms out of the library. When Primrose gets home, she finds her mother in the van “bedroom” and kicks her out.

David and Primrose take a two-week break from each other’s company. During this time, Primrose adds upgrades to her van home, and David makes up more rules to follow, becoming stricter than ever now that Primrose isn’t always breaking rules around him. While watching television one day, he sees a fortune-teller talking to people’s dead loved ones, so he decides to visit Primrose’s mother. When he does, Madam Dufee is out of character and confused, and she only wants to talk about Primrose. Eventually, David gets her to talk about his mother, but Madam Dufee is still sidetracked thinking about Primrose. David shows her his memento—his mother’s old turtle pin, but when Madam Dufee sings it a lullaby, David realizes that she is no help and leaves. He walks alone all night. When he realizes he might accidentally see the sunrise, he hides at Refrigerator John’s house. John takes David home after the sun has come up.

Primrose invites David over, and their friendship rekindles easily. She leads him out onto the train tracks, claiming that they are going to Philadelphia. She has walked part of the way before, and she doesn’t believe that the city will be far. As they walk, they bicker the entire time. Primrose has packed a lunch for them, so they eat along the way. Eventually, Primrose reveals that she wants to ask the Waving Man why he waves at people.

The trip is long. David quickly becomes hot, tired, and hungry, and he regrets his decision to trust Primrose again. Eventually, they stop for the night. Primrose gives David the last of the food that she secretly saved. The sun goes down quickly. Primrose gets comfortable and asks David to read to her by moonlight. David reads her to sleep. After he tells her many stories, he goes to sleep as well.

Primrose wakes David before the sun rises and says that she has something to show him. She brings him around the bend to a dam. As daylight quickly approaches, she guides him while he covers his eyes so that he won’t see the sunrise. Primrose stops on the dam to admire the view, letting go of David’s hand. David decides to look. He watches the sun rise with Primrose and sobs.

The police retrieve the children later that morning and drive them home. In the car, David shows Primrose his turtle memento. A crowd of people is waiting for them at the police station, including David’s father and grandmother. Primrose is surprised to see that her mother is there as well.

Seeing this, David realizes that there are many people around him who love and care about him, like his grandmother. As time goes on, he opens up to her again, and they plan his 10th birthday party together. David’s father also starts spending more time at home with him. David asks Primrose if she will ever go talk to the Waving Man, but Primrose just says that she figured out that the Waving Man waves to people because they wave back.