EMERGENCY

Everything’s under control in this primer on emergency vehicles.

This brief but engaging board book, published with three other entries in Cocoretto’s Wheels at Work series, acquaints toddlers with the names and uses of some of the biggest, loudest, and most brightly lit vehicles on the road. Each turn of the page opens to a spread-filling depiction of an emergency vehicle. Phrases such as “Let’s hurry to…” enlist the participation of young readers to fold open the right-hand page in order to reveal the rest of the sentence (“…the hospital!”) and an illustration of the truck in action. Here, the vehicle is an ambulance; the flap opens to reveal an EMT wheeling a patient from the back of the vehicle. A “police truck,” a “fire truck,” a “tow truck,” and a “four-wheel drive” follow. The drawings are appropriately simple and unadorned, favoring ease of recognition over artistry and design. Scenes include characters of both genders and many ethnicities and skin hues in key roles: black male and white female police officers, Asian male and white female firefighters, a white male ambulance driver, an Asian female EMT with a brown-skinned patient, a black woman tow-truck driver, and others. The ambulance features both a red cross and the red crescent seen in many Muslim countries. City, Construction, and Farm publish simultaneously.

For preschool motor-vehicle fanciers everywhere.