This weak title, one in an early-reader series that’s part of Scieszka’s Trucktown brand, purports to provide active children with a similarly rambunctious easy-to-read package. Scieszka’s author’s note for the series boasts, “Everything about Trucktown has been built to excite and motivate young readers…This is…a world where kids are inspired to become readers by action stories, and helped to become readers with amazing illustrations and selected vocabulary.” The result falls far short of such claims. Two trucks, Jack and Gabriella, follow a succession of legit and spoof road signs to a party at bulldozer Pete’s garage. Three illustrators, including David Shannon and Loren Long as well as Gordon, collaborated to create Trucktown’s unremarkable, stereotypical visuals. Jack is a sturdy red-and-blue flatbed, while Gabriella’s a pink garbage truck with a flowery monogrammed and a yellow “bow.” Typical visual personification for the vehicles—headlights are eyes; grilles are mouths—and muddy digital execution add little that’s fresh. Also out in June: Zoom! Boom! Bully (ISBN: 978-1-4169-4139-2; PLB: 978-1-4169-4150-7). For emergent readers, more hype than help. (Early reader. 4-6)
Pub Date: June 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4169-4138-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wormell (Blue Rabbit and the Runaway Wheel, see above) seamlessly blends landscape and playscape in this tale of a wonderfully catastrophic train wreck. As if it’s not bad enough that blubbery Mrs. Walrus, Mr. Bear, and Mrs. Elephant forcibly wedge themselves into the train’s tiny cars for a shopping trip into town, on their return they’re carrying 600 sardines, 15 loaves of bread, pots of honey, and a mountain of fresh fruit. “ ‘It’s just a matter of balance,’ ” Mrs. Elephant cheerfully assures the worried conductor. Indeed it is—until a bee crawls up Mrs. Elephant’s trunk, prompting a monumental sneeze. Groceries are scattered everywhere. What to do? Invite everyone to a picnic! Rather than his usual polychrome woodcuts, Wormell creates soft-edged, colored-pencil drawings here for a “younger,” softer look, depicting a simply carved wooden train sturdily pulling three hilariously overloaded cars. Afterward, willing trunks and flippers reset the tumbled cars onto their tracks, and off the train chugs, leaving the bloated picnickers strewn about like beached whales. Ending on a peaceful, satiated note, this explosive episode makes a first-rate entry in the annals of picture-book sneezes. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83986-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The creator of This Train (1999), This Plane (2000), and This Boat (2001) will continue to transport new and pre-readers with an array of vehicles at work and play. Between endpapers filled with paintings of identified autos, from the Benz Victoria (1893) to the jet-powered Thrust SSC (1997), Collicutt sandwiches larger generic portraits, each of a different type of car: big, small, powered by gas or solar energy, plowing snow, romping about on the Moon, and so on. With short, large-type captions focusing on contrasts—“This car has a closed top. This car has an open top”—and a rousing final close-up of an old-style racing car barreling past, this has everything but sound effects to please fans of wheeled and winged zoomers. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-6)
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-39965-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
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