Hardhat Cats: Construction Kitties by Judy Sue Goodwin Sturgis

THE SUN IS UP.
TIME FOR WORK.
CONSTRUCTION KITTIES
GRAB THEIR HATS,
INTO THEIR TRUCKS.

Four cute kitties--a black, brown, black-and-white, and gray-striped kitten--are the construction crew. They slip on their hardhats, jump into their crew-cab truck, and head off the building site as the sun is rising.

Waiting for them are all those cool construction vehicles--a loader, excavator, dump truck and backhoe--and the cats dig into their dirt-moving duties until the sun is high in the sky.

At noon the kitties knock off for lunch--milk, sandwiches and sardines--and one kitty take a bit of a cat nap until it's time to return to the job. Kitties drive crawlers and steer their 'dozers until their job is done and the construction site has shaped up into a nice flat space for a feline playground.  Soon it is sundown, and it's time to hop down from the drivers' seats,  hang up those hardhats, and head homeward.

A JOB WELL DONE!

Judy Sue Goodwin Sturgis' just-out Construction Kitties (Henry Holt, 2013) has appealing kitties and all the best-loved construction gear that preschoolers dote on. Artist Shari Halpern's blackline pen-and-ink figures and full-bleed color pages, with the heavy equipment shown in carefully detailed profile, drive the rudiments of dirt-moving home with aplomb. "A good addition to construction-machine collections everywhere," says Kirkus.

Pair this one with Sherri Rinker's and Tom Lichtenheld's best-selling, dirt-moving Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site (see my review here)-- with comment from the author herself-- for a doubly moving experience.