DIGGER DAISY!

Can she fix it? Yes, she can!

“Last night it rained. There was a flood. / The ranger calls. ‘Please clear this mud!’ / So Digger Daisy tells her crew, / ‘Load the trucks. There’s work to do.’” Pale-skinned Daisy and three hard-hatted and racially diverse workers get in their respective trucks and drive to a campground, where the fretful, brown-skinned ranger shows them a mess of downed trees and strewn rocks. Daisy and her hardworking crew hop back in their trucks and proceed to “scoop and dump,” “lift and load,” and otherwise clear the road of debris. But uh-oh: The dozer gets stuck in some muck! Daisy’s daisy-emblazoned pink excavator (which matches her hard hat) pulls but can do only so much; fortunately, Daisy’s imagination knows no bounds. Her idea—provide traction for the dozer’s wheels—saves the day, with an assist from some beavers willing to share their lumber: “With logs lined up, and pulling hard, / the dozer moves…an inch…a yard!” This is a thrilling bite-size adventure—littles do love a tale of heroism—fueled by percussive, high-octane rhymes. Yaccarino supplies his customary flat, geometric digital illustrations, which tend toward simplicity here, and the result will delight young readers, especially devotees of Byron Barton and fans of the other books in the Big Jobs, Bold Women series.

From rhyming text to plot to art / this story is all kinds of smart.