Saturday, December 19, 2009

Review: Machines Go To Work (Favorite Children's Books About Cars and Trucks)


It has been awhile since we have read or reviewed a new children's book about cars and trucks around here.  But thanks to a friend who sent this birthday gift a few weeks ago, we have a new one for our shelves (that is, if we ever stop reading it long enough to put it there). 

Machines Go To Work (Hardcover), by William Low. Various work machines - a helicopter, cement mixer, fire engine, and container ship, among others - perform their tasks. Simple text describes the roles of the various vehicles in a child-pleasing fold out flap format. The vibrant illustrations are nicely detailed without being overly busy.
Excerpt:
"When the drawbridge opens, this container ship may pass. Will it fit through the narrow gap? / The traffic has stopped. The bridge sections go up. / Carefully, the tugboat pulls the container ship along."
Bookworm's interest at 2 years, 1 month: He loves it. He likes counting the train cars, but enjoys the whole book. It was also apparently a favorite of the little boy who bought it for us - the best kind of recommendation, in our opinion!

Parent's Peeve: The "flaps" are not small "lift the flaps", but rather whole page fold outs. This style is fun, but I wish publishers would size the fold out pages an inch shorter, because I think the process of folding the flap in and turning the page neatly is a little difficult. It wouldn't stop me from buying it, though, and we haven't had any page scrunching yet.

As long-time readers of our blog know, transportation books are among the Infant Bibliophile's favorites.  You can find all of our reviews of children's books about cars and trucks here.   We also guest posted awhile back on Playing by the Book about this topic.

Here are links to 10 of our little guy's favorite children's books about transportation (LOVING the new Amazon tool in blogger, but it wasn't easy to pick only 10):

Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks from A to Z (A Chunky Book(R))

Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (Giant Little Golden Book)

Construction Countdown

Truck Stuck

My Truck is Stuck!

Trucks Go

I'm Your Bus

Cars & Trucks (Scholastic First Discovery)

Surprise, Thomas! (A Chunky Book(R))

Slide and Find - Trucks

Question
What other transportation books would make your top 10 list?

1 comment:

maryanne said...

Thanks for recommending all these truck cars - I now have some great suggestions for my own truck-loving son =)