A Truck Goes Rattley-Bumpa

Our 2 1/2 year old grand daughter loves this book so much that she has memorized it word for word and can now "read" it to us. A great little book for either a boy or girl. There's something about it that appeals to children. I highly recommend it.

This is our 13 month old's favorite book at the moment. He will bring it to us saying "bumpa, bumpa" and then ask us to read it over and over and over. He loves the bright illustrations and the rhythmic words - we even sing them sometimes. Dad and I love the sub-story in the illustrations (the pictures all show a family building and moving into a new home with the help of many trucks) and looking for details. Look for a squirrel on each page and for where the dad spills the paint when the boy anounces that the moving truck is almost there. I'm not sure that it will be a children's literature classic, but I have a feeling that it will be a special book in our family for years to come.

Jonathan London waxes poetic about the many kinds of trucks in this rhyming book for toddles. He introduces concepts such as color, length, quanitity, sound, and function--all ably illustrated by Denis Roche's friendly, bright, pictures (gouache on paper). We see long trucks (a lumber truck) and short (a forklift), a truck that goes "chugga-chuggs" (a cement mixer, and one that "goes vroom!" (a truck that flattens the cement--it doesn't seem like a vehicle that could vroom! very easily), ice cream, street cleaning, and moving trucks, among others. That moving truck gives the book some structure in its last 10 pages. A huge truck, with "Vincent and Francis Movers" painted on its side, rolls over a bridge, drives night and day, and finally arrives, through rural areas, and finally to a little neighborhood, where a young boy (whom we see driving his own toy tryck) joyfully watches the truck arrive at his home. London's narrative gives the boy's perspective, thus further engaging his young truck-loving audience. "If I were a trucker, I could polish the chrome. I could hop in that big rig... ...and drive it on home!" Below a picture of the sleeping boy--his toy trucks on the floor beneath him--there's a brief note informing us that author London's favorite truck is a '54 Ford pickup; illustrator Roche favors a garbage truck! This is a light book that should hold the attention of would-be truckers, and that may have special value for kids whose families are moving. Most of the trucks are in suburban or rural setttings, this is not a book for those who want to see trucks in the big city.