Diggers, dozers and dumpers : small stories about big machines

PreS-Gr 1--Könnecke crafts a set of sweet stories, most one spread long and packed with a nonfiction punch, highlighting construction vehicles and words in a matter-of-fact recounting of various animals at work. Emily Sheep is a sculptor, so she needs a large rock and employs a wheel loader. A jackhammer, hammer, and chisel round out her tool kit, and soon she has created a bust of herself, a little bit taller than she is. When an alligator, dog, and rabbit find the slide at the playground is wrapped in caution tape, Roberta Elephant appears with a small dumper, and the day is saved. Next up: "Cordula Cow has hit the big time as a concert pianist. Now she wants to entertain her less successful sisters. She's used a telescopic crane" to lower an upright piano into the field where her siblings are grazing. These are tightly told tales, with minor sidebars that offer more information about how the vehicles are used. This book is perfect for shared story hours, and will have children imagining their own fields of play and the equipment they might need. The illustrations are as lighthearted and accessible as Sandra Boynton's work, with just enough detail to draw in construction buffs, but without throwing the story off pace. VERDICT What a joyful way to impart information, complete with a female-heavy group of workers, and make children rethink what they know about tools.--Kimberly Olson Fakih

Wry humor is the fuel that makes these big machines go. Emily Sheep, a sculptor, uses a wheel loader to position a giant chunk of stone; forester Sven-Erik Moose uses a tree harvester to cull some ailing trees (he'd much rather be planting); Amanda Crocodile smooths out a bumpy road with a bulldozer, making her daily bike rides to work easy going. Each of these vignettes plays out over one or two double-page spreads with discrete blocks of text economically describing the scene, developing character, and delivering a fact or two about the digger, dozer, or dumper in question. Line and color cartoons pay due homage to the massiveness of most of these machines even when they tip into the absurd as when Quentin Crane uses a cherry picker to prune a tiny seedling or a rhinoceros baker whips up a batch of pancake batter in a cement mixer (ingredients: 2,692 liters of milk, 2.692 tons of flour, and 32,304 eggs). Things-that-go books crowd the shelves, but few offer as many giggles, snorts, and laughs as this one. Vicky SmithJuly/August 2025 p.79 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.