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THE DAY I HAD A FIRE TRUCK

A gentle little adventure filled with learning and friendship.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
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In the third picture book in Wall’s The Day I Had series, a young boy and his friends are put in charge of a fire truck for a day.

Blonde-haired, fair-skinned Luke and his dad are cleaning out the garage when Luke’s happy, stumpy-legged dog Bobo draws Luke’s attention to the big red fire truck parked outside. The truck has a note inside from the fire chief asking Luke to put together a crew and take over for the day (“the other firefighters and I have taken the day off to check out the new water park”). Luke and Bobo drive around to collect their friends (who have diverse skin and hair tones): bookworm Noah, go-getter Emma, and accident-prone Mikey. Together, they learn about firefighting equipment, rescue a cat from a tree, and put out a fire. Then Luke’s mom calls over the radio, telling him to come home and clean his room. Wall narrates using straightforward prose that doesn’t draw attention to itself—except in cases of deliberate emphasis, such as Mikey’s blue-font exclamations when he knocks over a fire hydrant. Duck’s illustrations, which combine hand-drawn and computer imaging techniques, afford a good sense of character and make astute use of the two-page spreads. The dinosaurs and bulldozer from previous The Day I Had books appear as toys alongside a toy fire truck, hinting deftly at Luke’s powers of imagination.

A gentle little adventure filled with learning and friendship.

Pub Date: March 25, 2025

ISBN: 9781960616180

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Mamabear Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2024

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK AND RACER RED

From the Little Blue Truck series

A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share.

In this latest in the series, Little Blue Truck, driven by pal Toad, is challenged to a countryside race by Racer Red, a sleek, low-slung vehicle.

Blue agrees, and the race is on. Although the two start off “hood to hood / and wheel to wheel,” they switch positions often as they speed their way over dusty country roads. Blue’s farm friends follow along to share in the excitement and shout out encouragement; adult readers will have fun voicing the various animal sounds. Short rhyming verses on each page and several strategic page turns add drama to the narrative, but soft, mottled effects in the otherwise colorful illustrations keep the competition from becoming too intense. Racer Red crosses the finish line first, but Blue is a gracious loser, happy to have worked hard. That’s a new concept for Racer Red, who’s laser-focused on victory but takes Blue’s words (“win or lose, it’s fun to try!”) to heart—a revelation that may lead to worthwhile storytime discussions. When Blue’s farm animal friends hop into the truck for the ride home, Racer Red tags along and learns a second lesson, one about speed. “Fast is fun, / and slow is too, / as long as you’re / with friends.”

A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: March 25, 2025

ISBN: 9780063387843

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.

The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: June 21, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016

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