Who cares? The equation of trucks + bedtime book = best-seller, even if it does set feminism back a few decades.
A group of construction vehicles put themselves to bed.
Rhyming couplets set the scene (“The sun has set, the work is done; / It’s time for trucks to end their fun”) and then describe their bedtime routines, truck by truck. The crane sets one last beam before settling in, a star-shaped nightlight suspended from his lowered mast and a teddy bear clutched in his stabilizing arms. The cement mixer is hosed down before giving into slumber beneath a much-too-small polka-dot blanket. The dump truck deposits one last load before conking out next to heaps of rubble. As depicted by Lichtenheld, the trucks all have googly windshield eyes and grins that more or less correspond to grilles. They look a lot like Disney Pixar’s Cars, but there are only so many ways to anthropomorphize a truck. He exerts his artistry in other ways; the dump truck’s snores, depicted as a rising stream of ever larger Z’s, float into the night, becoming part of the steel framework of the building under construction. Rinker’s verse does not always scan well, but it is rhythmic enough to carry readers along. It is a real shame that not a single one of these muscular vehicles is female; this employer is clearly not interested in equal opportunity.
Who cares? The equation of trucks + bedtime book = best-seller, even if it does set feminism back a few decades. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: May 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8118-7782-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2014
PERSPECTIVES
Readers will close this book loving their small part of the world a little more.
This picture book seems to contain everything in the world.
Everything in this story is connected to everything else. An acorn, held by a child, appears on the opening pages: “Within it grows a forest.” Following a spread of trees in a wood, we’re told, “And within that forest / towers an oak tree, tall and grand.” Scientifically minded adults may be reminded of an atom, too small to see but filled with quarks and neutrons and electrons. Later, the child catches a raindrop and starts to imagine where it came from—from “the depths of the sea” to a rain cloud to the child’s hand, and if it had landed back in the ocean, it might have kept traveling to a distant shore. Conti’s illustrations show the child watching that shore through a spyglass. Some of the items in the illustrations are a little frightening, like the rain cloud, painted in the heaviest blues and grays and blacks. But they’re beautiful, too. The fields of grass appear to contain every shade of green. Every item in the book, even a grain of sand, is as beautiful in both its simplicity and complexity. The child and other characters who appear are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers will close this book loving their small part of the world a little more. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780762479870
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A masterful consideration of perception, exploration, and, ultimately, love.
Seeming simplicity yields rich rewards in this sensory-steeped tale of adventure and friendship.
Color-sapped outlines of a wilderness kick off this tale of a dog and cat traveling together. “Two together headed home. / Cat and dog. / Bell and Bone. / For a moment. For a day. // Two together on their way.” After they peek at their reflections in the water, different artistic styles are used in the following pages to depict each animal; the dog is rendered in curved acrylics, the cat in spiky colored pencil. Sometimes the very page splits in two, one side portraying the dog’s perceptions and the other the cat’s. After a toad waylays them, they encounter a bear, a cave, and a rainstorm. As night falls, the colors grow deep and sumptuous, and home appears like a beacon. Inside, the two are now more rendered more realistically and in more detail than ever before. That is, until they go out again to prowl the night. Featuring the singsong nature of some of the best nursery rhymes, the tale reads with an effortless lilting quality, gently rhyming. Yet it’s the art that’s the showstopper here, and one wonders if the two are crispest in the home because we’re seeing them the way their human owner does. What is unquestionable is the friends’ affection for each other, the pair sticking side by side through thick and thin.
A masterful consideration of perception, exploration, and, ultimately, love. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781797202778
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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