A collection of trucks call it a night.
A milk truck, a tractor trailer, a dump truck, a garbage truck, a tanker truck, a tow truck, a monster truck, a flatbed truck and more all go about their end-of-day routines as the sky goes from twilight to evening. With only one or two trucks per double-page spread, long shadows and images of workers winding down from a long day, the scenes are quiet. A fire truck backs into the station, and the driver of an ice cream truck hangs a closed sign on the outside of her vehicle. The text is minimal, consisting mainly of captions labeling the vehicles, so it is Biggs’ quirky cartoons of chunky vehicles and droll people in muted hues that tell the story. The second-to-last double-page spread shows a pajama-clad man yawning and closing the door to his motor home, and the final scene depicts four dark vehicles in a moonlit RV park as the text reads, “Shhh...good night!” It’s refreshing to see the nonanthropomorphic vehicles only suggesting bedtime rather than being forced to perform getting-ready-for-bed rituals.
Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-195815-1
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
A perfect piece of treasure it is not, but shiver me timbers, it’s fun.
Two pirates and their parrot companion embark on adventures to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
Following Car, Car, Truck, Jeep (2018), Charman and Sharratt team up again for this swashbuckling, musical tale. The two buccaneers and their parrot spend a day at sea engaged in such maritime activities as scrubbing the deck and hoisting the sail along with quintessentially piratical chores like digging up buried treasure. At the end of the day—which culminates in a nonviolent walk across the plank—the two pirates return home. Charman’s rhyming text has a nice cadence, and thanks to the cover note to sing along to the tune of “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat,” it moves along at a nice clip. For the most part, the rhymes work neatly into the tune so that it reads easily the first time through. Sharratt’s black-outlined illustrations are boldly colored and eye-catching. The pirates themselves are not obviously gendered; one presents white and the other has light-brown skin. Most of the ocean creatures have anthropomorphized features—a mostly successful choice with the exception of the jellyfish and octopus, shown awkwardly with humanlike noses and smiles (and, oddly, eyebrows for the octopus). Overall, this one holds high appeal for little readers, and the nature of the singsong-y, rhyming text will make it a highly requested reread.
A perfect piece of treasure it is not, but shiver me timbers, it’s fun. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0319-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Short, sweet, and engaging; a sing-along introduction to furry first responders.
“The Wheels on the Bus” gets an extra syllable, a siren, a hose, and a snazzy new ladder.
This variation on the popular children’s song should hit the spot with budding truck aficionados among the diapered set. The text is a straight adaptation of “The Wheels on the Bus,” with firetruck and firefighting themes replacing the sights and sounds of a bus rider’s commute. The siren goes “Woo-woo-woo,” the lights go “Flash, flash, flash,” the riders “hold on tight,” the ladder goes “up, up, up,” and the hose, of course, goes “swish-swish-swish—now, the fire’s out.” The book won’t win awards for originality, but it should be a toddler pleaser. The colors on the cover are an explosion of reflective red foil against a bright yellow background; the interior colors are more muted but still bright and cheery. The firefighters and onlookers are anthropomorphic animals in firefighter costume or civvies, as the case may be. Characters include a racoon, some bunnies, a fox, and a woodchuck, among others, all rendered in an accessible, cartoony style. Between the bright colors and the smiling gameness of the furry firefighters, the proceedings should excite and delight most tots.
Short, sweet, and engaging; a sing-along introduction to furry first responders. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4244-3
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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