All in a Day's Work! Big Rig Rescue by Chris Gall

THERE'S A STORM BREWING AND A WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY.<

Who are you gonna call? Big Orange Wrecker!

Big Orange Wrecker has the right stuff--14 wheels, a boom, hooks, and a winch, plus a burly operator!

But when the Big Orange Wrecker arrives, the scene is dire.

...A BIG OL' SEMI ON ITS SIDE.

ROLLOVER!

It's even worse than it looked at first. The payload is scap metal, now strewn across the scene. The driver is not injured, but the fuel is leaking all over the road. Big Orange Wrecker's operator has to call a tanker truck to drain the diesel tank, and pull out his chains, straps, the snatch block, and the metal-cutting rescue saw to get the semi loose from the guard rail.

ZEEEEEEEEENNNNGGG! And that's not all!

By the time Big Orange Wrecker rolls away from the scene, he also has to pump up the giant airbags to raise the truck partway from its side and attach hooks and cables to winch the semi's trailer up, and when that fails, he has to call for more help--Big Blue Rescue, with more equipment to get the heavy trailer righted on the road and finally lifted on an new tractor-trailer rig's flat bed and secured for the haul-away. At last Big Orange Wrecker is on his way. He's done a good day's work, all right. But what's that ahead on the highway???

BLACK ICE???

At least Big Orange Wrecker knows the right guys to call for help, in Chris Gall's heavy-duty road rescue story, Big Rig Rescue! (Norton Young Readers, 2021). Author-illustrator Gall gets right down to the nitty-gritty of trucking equipment and is one solid heavyweight creator of big equipment stories for young readers. His illustrations are graphic and yet appealing and his text achieves serious dramatic excitement amidst the danger of the roadway rescue corps. Writes Publishers Weekly's reviewer, "Gall’s storytelling is as muscular as the rigs he celebrates: precisionist-style renderings continually move around and over the scene to satisfy the curiosity of truck aficionados, while detail-rich, matter-of-fact prose honors their enthusiasm and knowledge."

For more of Chris Gall's BIG stories for youngsters, see my reviews here.