GIANT VEHICLES

Eight real-life big “dogs”—some of which make the monsters of myth and movie look like Chihuahuas.

From a three-engine, 135-car coal train and the world’s biggest container ship to the Soviet-built Typhoon submarine and Mil Mi26 “Whopper Chopper,” these puppies are all designed to carry mammoth payloads over land or sea, through the air or into space. As usual, Biesty renders each with accurate proportions and in detail fine enough that individual workers or passengers can be discerned…though sometimes only as antlike dots. Surrounded by labels and smaller images, each portrait sprawls across a full spread of heavy stock. Revealing cutaways that are either visible or concealed beneath die-cut flaps of diverse shape and size give youngsters a chance to see inside. There is no real sense of relative scale; the Saturn V rocket that requires a 90-degree rotation of the book for readers to fully appreciate it looks downright slender next to the Caterpillar 797F dump truck that dominates the next spread. This quibble aside, there’s plenty to keep kids occupied for quite some time here.

A gallery of gargantuan delights guaranteed to leave young fans of mountainous machinery panting with pleasure.