MAIL MOVERS

Young vehicle maven Coyle goes postal in the latest installment of Finn’s Fun Trucks.

While previous books in this series introduced a variety of specialized and potentially unfamiliar vehicles to young readers, this book features five familiar but dissimilar conveyances that do the same job in different locales. An ethnically diverse group of mail carriers deliver the mail by means of truck, snowmobile, bicycle, boat, and motorcycle, depending on the country and landscape where they live. As in previous books in the series, each vehicle is named by its driver on verso and illustrated on the facing page, with three key features labelled. In past books, the drivers would ask readers to guess what each vehicle does; readers would then open the flap with the vehicle’s picture on it to see it in action. In this book, the question is slightly different; for example, “I drive a snowmobile. Can you guess where I deliver the mail?” When the flap is opened, readers see a mail carrier on a snowmobile racing through deep drifts in northern Canada. The truck is used in the U.S., the bicycle in the Netherlands, the boat in Venice, Italy, and the motorcycle in Tokyo. Young readers learn that different settings require different solutions and get an introduction to world geography at the same time. Heavy Haulers publishes simultaneously, hewing to the series’ familiar format.

Once again, the Finn’s Fun Trucks series delivers.