Though this tale takes readers down a road well traveled, it’s still a fun ride.
Dirt-covered trucks head for the Big Truck SUPER Wash for a scrub.
This picture book features big-rig kid favorites like the excavator, the tractor, and the 18-wheeler, complete with the grossest of messes. These trucks have it all, from stuck-on bugs to manure. After a trip through the Big Truck SUPER Wash, they come out sparkling clean and ready for rest. The rhyming text works well for reading aloud to little listeners. The transportation-related vocabulary provides exposure to words like chrome and gleaming. Each truck explains its messy job in the first person. Detailed, colorful, and appealing illustrations show the trucks in action, earning their dirt, the front engines and grills turned into faces. A tan-skinned, mustachioed, broad-shouldered SUPER Wash worker appears throughout the book, seen on billboard ads and interacting with the trucks. Addressing the vehicles directly, the character functions as a narrator (“Here’s a rig we don’t see a lot: / Big Farm Tractor, what’s with the spots?”). All of the elements of this book come together well, and while it doesn’t stand out on overcrowded shelves of similar titles, it is sure to be enjoyed by the children who find it. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Though this tale takes readers down a road well traveled, it’s still a fun ride. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780823445882
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Wormell (Blue Rabbit and the Runaway Wheel, see above) seamlessly blends landscape and playscape in this tale of a wonderfully catastrophic train wreck. As if it’s not bad enough that blubbery Mrs. Walrus, Mr. Bear, and Mrs. Elephant forcibly wedge themselves into the train’s tiny cars for a shopping trip into town, on their return they’re carrying 600 sardines, 15 loaves of bread, pots of honey, and a mountain of fresh fruit. “ ‘It’s just a matter of balance,’ ” Mrs. Elephant cheerfully assures the worried conductor. Indeed it is—until a bee crawls up Mrs. Elephant’s trunk, prompting a monumental sneeze. Groceries are scattered everywhere. What to do? Invite everyone to a picnic! Rather than his usual polychrome woodcuts, Wormell creates soft-edged, colored-pencil drawings here for a “younger,” softer look, depicting a simply carved wooden train sturdily pulling three hilariously overloaded cars. Afterward, willing trunks and flippers reset the tumbled cars onto their tracks, and off the train chugs, leaving the bloated picnickers strewn about like beached whales. Ending on a peaceful, satiated note, this explosive episode makes a first-rate entry in the annals of picture-book sneezes. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83986-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A glory ride for young car, truck, train, bus and trolley devotees.
In a visual feast for fans of wheeled vehicles large and small, Biggs presents a series of high-density street scenes done in an amiably rumpled cartoon style.
Driving in from the ’burbs to a generic metropolis, a lad and his dad gloss each big, double-page spread—“ ‘Do trucks work the same way as cars?’ / ‘Many of them do. Trucks also have jobs, like cars’ ”—as they glide through heavy traffic, past a construction site and under an elevated highway. They wait for fleets of bikes and motorcycles to pass and park at last near a train station to pick up Mom. Along with sparely labeled close-up or cutaway views of a car, a bicycle, a big truck, a subway station, an RV and other specimens, the author sets up the family reunion at the end with a giant double-gatefold aerial view of an entire neighborhood packed with traffic, pedestrians, local businesses and signs, each one individually distinct. Jokey side conversations (one firefighter tells another, "There's no fire. It's just a cat"; his companion asks, "Should we get some milk?") play off more serious and informative dialogue. A diagram of a car is accompanied by a disquisition on the relationship between a car battery and the motor, as well as the fact that "[a]n electric car uses batteries and electric motor. No gas!"
A glory ride for young car, truck, train, bus and trolley devotees. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-195809-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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