For those who ever thought making a road was a simple process, Gray will show you to think again; easy street is all but easy to fashion. Bono’s road crew—three-dimensional, clay-like characters, all button-nosed and busyness—demonstrate the steps necessary to lay an asphalt roadway. Road-building is an act of many parts, but as Gray tells it in his minimal rhyme, it is also a straightforward affair: one layer goes upon another, dirt then gravel then “Asphalt, asphalt, cooked with heat. / Pouring out a slice of street. / Sticky street, soft to spread. / Squeeze it out like jam on bread.” Always, there is the road maker’s refrain: “Roll it, roll it, wheels so fat. / Roll it down to make it flat.” Complementing the read-aloud bounce of the text is an afterword that explains the importance of compaction, the composition of aggregate and the origin of the word “asphalt.” And who won’t be intrigued by the fact that mixed in with all the tar is a good measure of dinosaur bones? (Picture book. 2-5)
Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-47657-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION
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Not quite the Polar Express….
Sobel’s rhyming text fails to deliver a clear premise for the eponymous goodnight train’s Christmas Eve progress through the pages, and Huliska-Beith’s acrylic paintings embellished with fabric and paper collage don’t clarify the storytelling. At the start of the picture book, a bevy of anthropomorphic animals decorates a rather rickety-looking engine, and then human children gather around and pile into train cars that look like beds and cribs. The train follows a track, seemingly in pursuit of Santa’s sleigh, but to what end isn’t clear. They travel “through a town of gingerbread” and through the woods to find the sleigh blocking the tracks and the reindeer snoozing while, mystifyingly, Santa counts some sheep. Perching the sleigh on the train’s cowcatcher, they all proceed to the North Pole, where the “elves all cheer. / Santa’s here until next year!” But then the goodnight train just…leaves, “heading home on Christmas Eve.” Was this a dream? It definitely wasn’t a story with a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Santa’s face is never seen; the human children and elves are diverse.
A Christmas train book that gets derailed by a lacking story arc. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-61840-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION
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A petite excavator named Little E finds his place among a crew of full-sized, heavy-construction equipment working together to build a park.
The anthropomorphic Little E, with bright, friendly eyes and a cheery smile, invites readers into the story on the large-format cover. He is followed by a brown-and-white–spotted dog, which appears throughout the story as a friend to Little E. The construction vehicles arrive at an abandoned lot and begin working together to transform the property into a park. The rollicking, rhyming text names each type of rig and its function, including lots of sound effects and action verbs set in display type integrated into the illustrations: “Pusha-pusha smusha-smusha SMASH SMASH SMASH!” Little E tries to help with each step, but he is either too small or not strong enough for the task at hand. The last step of the park-construction project is the planting of a tree on an island reached by a bridge, but all the big rigs are too large to safely cross the wooden bridge. In a pitch-perfect conclusion, Little E is just the right size for the job. Dewdney, the late author/illustrator of the Llama Llama series, has constructed a solid winner for one of her final books, with an appealing main character, vibrant illustrations with varying perspectives, and an action-packed, rhyming text with sound effects just begging to be read aloud with dramatic effect.
An A+ for Little E and his creator. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-99920-2
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION
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