Cars

The "Machines at Work" series by Hal Rogers has been a hit at my house with my five-year-old son. The language is simple but introduces new vocabulary with each book (controls, pedals, sirens, taillights...). This book discusses cars, SUVs, sports cars, police cars, and taxis, but very simply (for example, "police officers drive special cars...") and at the end it goes into detail into the parts of a car ("many cars have a trunk"; "the driver uses a steering wheel to drive the car"; "Pedals on the floor make the car stop and go," and then it has a chart listing the parts discussed. It's a great book for vocabulary and finding things in pictures for my younger son, but there is also a glossary in the back with definitions of potentially unfamiliar words. I also love that in this book, it shows a female police officer in her car. All in all, my son (who has had an ear cocked for engines of all types since he was about 1) has really enjoyed this series, so much so that I may have to buy a bunch of them. We got them originally from the library.