BRUM, BRUMM, BRUMMMM! Woodie Guthrie's Riding in My Car, designed by Scott Menchin

TAKE ME RIDING IN YOUR CAR, CAR,
TAKE ME RIDING IN YOUR CAR, CAR.

I'LL TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE, TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE,
TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE IN MY CAR, CAR.

A rubber-necking family of dogs sets out to see the U.S.A., fittingly making the tour in a three-dimensional "woody" convertible, as they take in such iconic scenes as Mt. Rushmore, the Stature of Liberty, The White House, the Golden Gate Bridge, and even Guthrie's hometown in Oklahoma.

The award-winning Scott Menchin has designed this "movable" book with winsome drawings, pull-tab and lift-the-flap action, and concealed historical and geographical notes (e.g., Route 66) of each landmark as the car rolls cross country, accompanied by part of the text of Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." Little fingers can turn wheels to make desert critters cross the road, move the car through a cloverleaf exchange, pull in a catch on the Mississippi, and make a bronco buck a buckaroo in a corral on the Western plain. All along, Woody's rhythmic text keeps everything rolling merrily along:

I'M GONNA LET YOU BLOW THE HORN,
I'M GONNA LET YOU BLOW THE HORN.

HONK, HONK, HONK! BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
TAKING A RIDE IN MY CAR, CAR.

Scott Menchin's latest, Riding In My Car (lb-kids,, 2012) is the way to see the U.S.A, with never a whine of "Are we there yet?" An appendix provides a link to the Smithsonian and a playback of Woody Guthrie performing this song as the soundtrack for this delightful and joyful trip of a book.

Roll 'Em! Cars Galore by Peter Stein

CARS AND MORE CARS. DOING THE CHORE CARS. REV 'EM UP AND MAKE 'EM GO CARS!

A thoroughly modern, digitally illustrated picture book with a deliciously retro feel, Peter Stern's and Bob Staake's Cars Galore (Candlewick Press, 2011) features a seemingly endless passing parade of creatively varied vehicles, with continuously curvaceous roadways which sinuously swirl and circle and double back over themselves in a style which keeps the eye in motion and the pages turning.

Stern's energetically rhyming text, echoing the fifties classics of Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman, is both familiar and unique, in a rocking urban setting in which cars are the stars:

JAZZ CAR, SOUL CAR. ROCK 'N' ROLL CAR. BLUES CAR, SONG CAR. SING-A-LONG CAR.

And artist Bob Staake's preposterous cars--shark cars, Noah's Ark as zoomobile cars, cars with multiple centipede legs,-stinky, smelling like a skunk cars--and their exotic passengers will keep readers' poring over the visual humor on each double-page spread even as their fingers itch to turn the page and see what's next in this motor mania.

Our family cars are all things to us--part living room, part convenient appliance, and part family pet--all without losing their innate mystique of freedom, and this affection shines through on each imaginative page. There's even a promise for the youngest motorhead reader:

FUN DRIVE, SUN DRIVE, GOTTA RUN DRIVE! DREAM DRIVE, COOL DRIVE... SOMEDAY YOU'LL DRIVE!