DIGGER DIGGER DIGGER

A little boy engages in imaginative sandbox play with his front-end loadertoy in Clarke’s picture book.

Young children’s fascination with construction vehicles, whether toys or the real thing, is an evergreen picture-book theme. This entry focuses on the sheer pleasure a child takes in playing with a favorite toy “digger.”Preschooler Elliot, in his backyard sandbox, speaks the phrase that’s repeated on each page of the rhyming text: “Digger Digger Digger / Big Scoop Dump!” In somewhat stilted verse, caused partly by occasionally reaching for rhymes with dump (stomp, rump, clump, dromedary’s hump), Elliot imagines himself inside the digger, excavating huge piles of sand and rock from a vast site: “Deeper in the dirt, / Steady he would dig, / Down, deep and pleasing / The hole grew ever big.” Visually, the full-color book has a pleasingly homemade look. (Clarke previously teamed up with illustrator Amendolagine on his first children’s book, Harriet’s Egg, in 2021.) Elliot’s exaggeratedly wide eyes are off-putting, but the border-to-border watercolor illustrations are vibrant, featuring fun details for children to spot, and the text is clear and readable. In the book’s genuinely sweet coda, Elliot, tired out from play, snuggles into his mother’s arms and is toted off to bed.

An uneven but lively book for kids who love construction vehicles.