Movin' It: Digger, Dozer, Dumper by Hope Vestergaard

ARE YOU QUICK? OR SLOW OR STEADY? THERE'S A TRUCK FOR YOU.

ARE YOU PRECISE? OR REALLY STRONG? WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO.

Kids who long for BIG and powerful construction behemoths will find lots to love in Hope Vestergaard's
Digger, Dozer, Dumper(Candlewick Press, 2013). With plenty of friendly-looking but detailed illustrations of such power movers, the usual suspects--dump trucks, garbage trucks, and power shovels going all the way back to Virginia Burton's Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, --illustrator David Slonim adds more exotic earth movers--skid-steer loaders, excavators, and backhoes, who prep the site for the steam roller and cement mixer to step in and lay the foundation for the steel monkeys to build upon.

Meanwhile, out on the road, there are semis, ambulances, fire trucks, cherry pickers, and tow trucks to choose among.

But in addition to her catalog of big machines, it is in her savvy rhyming descriptions that Vestergaard's text shines.

WHO MADE THIS HOLE? A DIGGER?
TOO SMALL? SHE'LL MAKE IT BIGGER!

HER NAME? THE EXCAVATOR.
HER JOB? SMOOTH OPERATOR.

With a street sweeper whose "steely whiskers whisper/ as they gather dust and dirt," and the dump truck who, when "the gravel starts to spill...makes a little hill," Vestergaard's narrative sings, positively poetic. A super storytime companion to Sherry Duskey Rinker's modern classic, Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site. (Read my review here.)