WHEELS!

Cars, trucks, and the wheels they rode in on grab the spotlight and won’t let go in this vehicular celebration.

The usual smattering of car/truck/bus facts gets an international kick in the pants. Within the book’s three sections (“Cars,” “Trucks,” and “Wheels”), readers delve deep into rhymes, chants, very short stories, and more. There’s even more onomatopoeia than is usually found in a book full of vehicle facts. In this way the book is designed to appeal to those younger readers who appreciate hearing that a tow truck’s platform tips up with a “whoosh, bop.” One section even allows kids to “drive” a tractor from its cab, though the onomatopoeia here comes from farm animals readers see on either side of the windshield and dial-studded dashboard. On occasion the book may be overoptimistic. Kids may thrill to the array of “Future Cars” and the wonders the book proposes, but the promise that “soon we will all be taking rides in electric cars, buses, and trucks” may not be borne out, at least within a child’s understanding of “soon.” The book is admirable in its worldwide scope, as when it surveys the different designs to be found on trucks in India, Pakistan, Japan, and Peru. It stumbles in describing the Dakar Rally exclusively as a South American event (it began as a Paris-Dakar race and is now held in Saudi Arabia). While text often resembles poetry, only some reaches for rhyme.

The book that’ll give Richard Scarry’s venerable Cars and Trucks and Things That Goa run for its money.