WHAT TRUCKS LOVE TO DO 2

The second picture book in Riera’s What They Love series examines the working lives of vehicles that contribute to society.

The setting is a city populated by expressive Pixar-style cars, trucks, and other motorized characters with windshield eyes and smiley bumpers. A variety of helpful trucks and service vehicles go about their work, including ambulances, fire engines, helicopters, tow trucks, blue-hatted police cruisers, delivery vans, school buses, dump trucks, street cleaners, repair vehicles that clean up after storm damage, and food trucks that keep other vehicles well fed. They all work hard and deserve our appreciation, notes the narrator: “So, when you’re riding through your town, / make sure you stop to look around, / and wave and shout a big ‘thank you!’ / To helper trucks for all they do.” Riera brings the setting to life with simple rhyming couplets and creative variations of type size, color, and orientation. Weizman’s two-page-spread illustrations again portray a busy, vibrant city with denizens whose pun-based names give them delightful character; for example, there’s musician tour bus Trailer Swift, street cleaner Sweeping Beauty, and power-line repair truck Volts Wagon. The author’s appealing fondness for wordplay extends to the Brake Dance Academy and a drive-in cinema showing Alfa Romeo and Juliet. Young readers will enjoy the tour—as will many adults.

Fun and informative, with plenty of puns.