Kids Story Books

Posts Tagged ‘kids books about vehicles’

Dig Dig Digging is a colorful board book for infants by Margaret Mayo and Alex Ayliffe. The book is small and measures 5.8 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches with 22 pages. Learn about different engines that dig and do other things. Meet the:

• Diggers
• Fire engines
• Tractors
• Garbage trucks
• Cranes
• Transporters
• Dump trucks
• Road rollers
• Bulldozers, and
• Trucks

Cataloguing the world of heavy equipment, this vibrant square volume explores the unique capabilities of 11 vehicles, from construction trucks to rescue helicopters. On each spread, Mayo (Wiggle Waggle Fun) offers plenty of colorful adjectives and terse verbs: "Bulldozers are good at push, push, pushing, over rough, bumpy ground, scraping, and shoving."

Ayliffe, who explored some of this territory before in The Busy Building Book, pictures two bulldozers, one yellow and the other red, attacking clods of dirt and showing trees no mercy as they maneuver around a hill at precarious angles.

The artist works in brightly colored cut paper, adding just enough detail to the people and landscapes (the bumpy texture of caterpillar tracks, the grid work of a crane tower) to satisfy young enthusiasts. A refrain on each spread reminds readers that these distinctive vehicles share at least one similarity: "They can work all day." A final spread of a darkened town full of stilled vehicles demonstrates that even giant trucks and earthmovers need to turn off their engines: "Shhh! They can rest all night." Ages 3-5.

School-K-Bold, bright spreads present visual word poems about large trucks, tractors, and cranes and the work they do. Often the shape of the rhyme reflects the action performed by the machine. For example, the bold, black print describing fire engines arcs and curves like the water splashing from the fireman's hose.

Text about the bulldozer bumps across the page. "Bulldozers are good at push, push, pushing, over rough, bumpy ground, scraping and shoving." The verse on every page ends with the refrain, "They can work all day." Although not all of the rhymes are equally satisfying, they successfully move readers from page to page, truck to truck. The large, simple images in vivid colors and wide, uncluttered spreads will appeal to young children. Stylized skyscrapers dot the horizon in contrasting colors of purple and pink or blue and white, against very blue, sunny skies. The people are all Lego-like in appearance. The last spread, at the end of a very busy book, quiets its colors, with motors off and machines at rest. This book will rev the engines of those youngsters who love vehicles.  Alice Casey Smith, Sayreville Public Schools, Parlin, NJ

Dig Dig Digging (On the Go)

Dig Dig Digging