Dig This! Dig! by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clamesha

DIG UP ROCK AND DIG UP CLAY.

DIG UP ROCK AND CLAY ALL DAY.

Mr. Rally has overalls, boots, a yellow hardhat, and a dog named Lightning who has a thing for digging, too. He has a versatile earth-moving vehicle and a full-day's work order, with five different jobs to do.

First, that ridge up ahead needs a bridge.

Pushing and scooping is Mr. Rally's job, and he does it well, leaving the first work site with the soil for the bridge's approach in place. Meanwhile, his dog Lightning digs a deep hole and comes up with... a bone.

Mr. Rally is off to job two, where the excess rain is needing a drain. He digs the trench with his backhoe shovel, and leaves the rest to the pipe layers, while Lightning does his thing off to the side, and comes up with... another bone.

Mr. Rally has to hustle over to a highway where a mini-avalanche has left him a load to remove from the road. He scoops and dumps it while Lightning excavates... another bone. Then it's off to town where the school is getting a pool, and then for job #5, his final of the day,  it's time for some site prep for a new zoo.

Whew!

Mr. Rally and Lightning head for home. It's the end of the official workday, but they don't put their digger away, because their garden needs to be prepared, too. At least Lightning has five bones for a snack before he helps Mr. Rally till up the vegetable patch. What can you say?

DIG UP ROCK AND DIG UP CLAY!
DIG UP ROCK AND CLAY ALL DAY!

It's all in a day's work, in Andrea Zimmerman's and David Clamesha's Dig! (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), a jolly story for kids who really dig big construction machinery.  Adding to rollicking rhymes from the co-authors, retro illustrations by Marc Rosenthall, which will feel equally at home to fans of Burton's classic Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel or Rinker's current best-selling Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site, give this picture book loads of kid appeal, mixing full-bleed double page spreads with well-placed spot art in the style of  H. A. Rey's George books.

Publisher's Weekly says "The husband-and-wife writing team behind Trashy Town here offers a cheerful look at a day in the life of Mr. Rally... which makes a jaunty read-aloud."