Nate Twitchell is a twelve-year-old farm boy whose hen lays a giant egg that hatches into a baby triceratops. Nate names the dinosaur Uncle Beazley and raises him as his pet. The family deals with various complications, including attention from the media and the increasing difficulties of caring for and feeding a growing dinosaur.
The Enormous Egg contains examples of:
- Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: The book starts with a mini-plot about the family's rooster, Ezekiel, who crows every morning, annoying the neighbors. The solution is to put him in the cellar at night and not let him out until well after sunup, so he won't know when to crow.
- Dead Guy Junior: Every one of the family's animals is named after some relative. Uncle Beazley is named after Nate's great-great-uncle, John Beazley.
- Domesticated Dinosaurs: Nate walks Uncle Beazley like a dog every day. Once he gets big, Nate starts riding on his back.
- Eskimos Aren't Real: One of Nate's friends says that dinosaurs never existed - some guys found some big bones and made up stories about them.
- I Should Write a Book About This: Nate writes down the events of the book on his dad's advice.
- Moral Guardians: Senator Granderson is constantly trying to save America from various things, most recently comic books and firecrackers, and he's so good at getting people fired up that he often succeeds. When he learns about Uncle Beazley's existence, he decides that living dinosaurs are a menace to society due to being ugly, outmoded, and un-American, and tries to pass a bill banning them.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: Nate's mother gets annoyed when a doctor starts giving Nate advice on how to handle his pet triceratops, when he should be concentrating on his job of healing the sick. He's actually a palaeontologist.
- Throwing Out the Script: When Nate goes on TV to give a speech about why Uncle Beazley should be kept alive, he's given a speech to read presenting a bland factual argument about why his pet triceratops should be spared. It gets replaced at the last minute with a note from Dr. Ziemer reading "You know what to do, good luck!" and once he gets past the stage fright, he ends up giving a heartfelt, spontaneous, and far more effective speech.
- Waving Signs Around: Protestors show up at the zoo in droves, waving signs that say things like "Birdwatchers for Beazley" and "Save the Only Dino."
