Old MacDonald Had a Truck
Steve Goetz and Eda Kaban
Chronicle Books
What on earth is going on down on Old MacDonald’s farm? Certainly the animals are there but what are they up to? We join them and the farming couple as they start the day, the latter in a truck loaded with a what looks like metal, and are greeted by the livestock: all looks pretty normal …

but turn the page and an excavator confronts us with a ‘DIG DIG here and a DIG DIG ‘there … ‘
Thence follows a whole lot of scooping, pushing and shoving,

scraping and raking, dumping and thumping, squishing and smashing, spinning and whirling as the noisy narrative takes readers through the book page by page and Mrs M gets on with the job of reconstructing the truck’s engine, adding new tyres (huge ones) and giving the whole thing a respray.

Mr M. meanwhile has been in charge of the digging, building –

and generally directing the construction of an arena.
With the day’s work finally complete, Mr and Mrs Macdonald don goggles and safety helmets, jump into their reconstructed vehicle and she drives them off into the night with a wave to their co-constructers.
Exuberant pencil and gouache illustrations, digitally composited, coupled with a jaunty, onomatopoeic text are just the thing for a lively story session be it with an early years audience or an individual vehicle-loving youngster. Whatever your audience, make sure you allow plenty of time to explore the humorous details on every spread –much of the story is told in the visuals.

Little Blue Truck
Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry
Nosy Crow
The little blue truck trundles merrily on its way greeting the animals as it passes them: ‘Sheep said, “Baaa!”/Cow said, “Moo!”/”Oink!” said a piggy./”Beep!” said Blue.’ On it goes over hill and dale

until a large and very rude dump truck hurtles past, swerves and ends up stuck in a whole load of muck. His honks for help go unanswered by the animals. However, being the kind-hearted vehicle that he is, Little Blue attempts a rescue but he too ends up stuck fast in the mire. That’s when all that friendliness of his pays dividends: the animals rally together, ‘Head to head/and rump to rump, /they all pushed Blue -/ who pushed the Dump.’
But even that doesn’t quite do it; then up pops one more creature – that tiny green toad

and it’s he whose added power finally frees both Dump and Blue. Paying it forward certainly works and even Dump drives off having learned an important lesson about being a good friend and the rewards of neighbourliness.
I’m not surprised this story is already a best seller in the USA. It’s full of opportunities for listeners to join in with the animal (and vehicle) sounds that are part and parcel of the rollicking rhyming text.
I love those rural scenes with their nostalgic feel and dusky palette.

Use your local bookshop