I LOVE TOOLS!

A family carpentry project affords Sturges the opportunity to show young readers that tools are a groove. The task at hand is to build a bluebird house, and it is carried forth with all the joyous, purposeful cooperation one might witness at an Amish barn-raising. To the accompaniment of Halpern’s crisp, closely observed illustrations, Sturges introduces a number of tools; not just hammer, screwdriver and saw, but a brace and bit, a square and a clamp. The family takes the time to do it right and Sturges sets the work in a spare, simple rhyme scheme: “The hammer pounds a nail, and then—Oops! It pulls it out again.” The endpapers are an added bonus, giving brief descriptions of a tool’s uses and providing some fun facts: You turn a screwdriver right to make a screw tight, for instance, and the average pencil can draw a line 35 miles long. Imagine that. (Picture book. 3-6)