CONSTRUCTION SITE: SPRING DELIGHT

A new addition to the Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site board-book series celebrates spring’s arrival, and Easter’s too.

As “warm sunshine melts the snow away,” a construction site in what looks to be a remote rural area joyfully comes alive. Seven different occupational trucks begin their work, carrying out their specialized tasks. A concrete mixer pours concrete into a trench to make a foundation for a building, a crane truck lifts a huge wooden crate, a dump truck hauls away dirt, and so on. There are no humans pictured in the artwork; instead, the vehicles, which are anthropomorphically rendered with eyes, noses, and mouths, seem to have wills of their own. Each sturdily constructed double-page spread has a flap that, when lifted, reveals a lovely springtime surprise, from a duck and her ducklings swimming in a nearby lake to blooming tulips springing up from the ground behind the wooden crate. To cap off this engaging exploration of a setting that will be fascinating to many young children, not one, but four flaps on the final double-page spread make for a fun Easter egg hunt. Rinker’s rhyming couplets scan well. The flaps are big enough for little ones still developing motor skills, with notched spaces that make them easy to lift. Ford's colored pencil and oil pastel illustrations capture the promise of a new season’s—and a new day’s—dawn and persevere in the style Tom Lichtenheld established in the first book of the series.

A winsome board book that highlights both the work of construction crews and the work of nature.