Hoisting High! Curious George's Crane by Carol Chu

ONE DAY GEORGE LOOKS OUT THE WINDOW AND SEES...
A BRIGHT SHINY CRANE

AS HIGH AS A TREE.

Of course, George is curious. "Well, who wouldn't be?" as creator H. A. Rey famously said.

And this day George is up for an uplifting experience! He zooms downstairs and soon is standing in front of an unusual, big yellow truck, with a friendly looking man in a hard hat at the controls. And there's a long lift arm which can hoist heavy loads way up high. Big logs are being lifted as if they were feathers and put in place to make... WHAT?

Curious George climbs into the cab and suddenly he realizes what the crane is constructing. Something he can't wait to slide down!

In Carol Chu's Curious George's Crane (mini movers shaped board books) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), not only does this "toy and movable book" show how playground equipment is assembled from the ground up, it also provides its lucky owner with a chance to try his or her hand at the project.

The lift arm folds out, complete with hook, and among the final pages of this inventive little shape book are press-out versions of the construction materials so that the book's owner can re-enact the whole process. Press-out stands for the completed job enable the young builder to prepare his or her own construction site piece by piece. Illustrations by Alessandro Prezini provide spot-on likenesses of H.A. Rey's ever-popular picture book hero, Curious George.

Other books in this series include Curious George's Train (mini movers shaped board books), Curious George's Dump Truck (mini movers shaped board books), and Curious George's Fire Truck (mini movers shaped board books).

Daddy's Little Helper: Mighty Dads by Joan Holub

MIGHTY DADS, STRONG AND TALL,
HELP THEIR CHILDREN, YOUNG AND SMALL.

In a double-header picture book that combines the preschool-pleasing construction vehicles with fatherhood, Joan Holub's just published Mighty Dads (Scholastic Press, 2014) celebrates fathers of every sort in chunky rhymes that point up that Dad has two responsibilities, his work in the world and his job teaching his kids what they need to learn.

Dads show their tads how it's done:

DUMP TRUCK STURDY

TEACHES DUMPY TO GET DIRTY.

THEY GO FILL...DRIVE...DUMP!

But Dad also remembers that his little one sometimes needs help.

CEMENT MIXER BUSY
GIVES A HUG IF MIXIE'S DIZZY!

Holub gives her little vehicles charming nicknames: the little bulldozer is Dozy, the little backhoe is Hoe-Hoe, and the small road grader is Grady, offering a chuckle with each description of the work to be done. All the usual suspects of the construction machine genre are there--graders, steam rollers, excavators, cranes, forklifts, boom trucks, all led by dump truck Big Daddy Son.

If the illustrations seem familiar, it's because artist James Dean provides the scratchy black line, daubs of watercolor, and especially those big black-line eyes found in his popular Pete The Cat books. A touch of Dean-style humor can be seen in the tiny trench, the petite pile of dirt, and the small slabs of cement that the little machines create alongside their dad's magnum efforts.

Boys and girls who love big machines will recognize their favorites and join in on Holub's jolly refrains--SPIN, SPIN, SPIN, SCOOP, SCOOP, SCOOP, and SMOOTH, SMOOTH, SMOOTH!--in this salute to doing it with Dad!

For more movers, shakers, and builders, here's a variety of tried-and-true hardhat winners!

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.

Dino-Delvers: Dinosaur Dig by Penny Dale

ONE DINOSAUR DIGGING A HOLE.

A VERY BIG HOLE!

What could be better to preschoolers than combining two of their favorite subjects--big machines and dinosaurs? In Penny Dale's jolly counting tale, Dinosaur Dig! (Nosy Crow/Candlewick Press, 2011), there are ten familiar (triceratops) and not-so-familiar (baronyx) dinosaurs at the controls of a wide variety of construction gear--from the familiar dump truck to the rarely spotted telehandler as the drivers dig, shovel, dump, hoist, and pump concrete into a giant but mysterious hole. The machines multiply, each with their own dino-types of drivers, as the workers on this big project count up from one to ten and while young readers are left to wonder: WHAT are they building?

SPLASH!

It's a splash-crash ending as the dinos cool off in their very own self-constructed mega-swimming pool!

The endpapers of this one tell the tale. The front inside cover is bedecked with the ten driver dinos, (with labels) and the back cover features their construction equipment in all its mighty power, equally identified by name. It's a dynamite dinosaur project which youngsters can count on!

Pair this one with Chris Gall's Revenge of the Dinotrux (see my review here) for a dynamite dino power duo.

Bedtime for Builders:; Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherry Rinker

DOWN IN THE BIG CONSTRUCTION SITE
THE TOUGH TRUCKS WORK WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT.

THE SUN HAS SET, THE WORK IS DONE.
IT'S TIME FOR TRUCKS TO END THEIR FUN.

Crane hoists a last I-beam, Cement Mixer spreads his final load, and Dump Truck deposits his last run of rip rap, as twilight falls over the construction site. Even heavy equipment goes off duty at night, and these rough and tough big boys must finally head for their nocturnal parking places as the crescent moon rises over their site, nestling itself cozily in the basket of the power shovel in a moment of lunar laziness.

Sherry Rinker's and Tom Lichtenheld's best-selling new Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site (Chronicle Books, 2011) is just the lullaby needed for those kids who toddle off to their trundle beds with a toy bulldozer instead of a teddy for a bed buddy. With Rinker's sweet and simple rhyming text and Lichtenheld's irresistible anthropomorphizing big builders, this one is sure to become a bedtime classic, fun to read aloud and great to have read to you, a story which salutes the excitement of BIG machines and still manages to put in a plug for snooze time. Make this one the nightcap that follows Kate and Jim McMullan's I'm Dirty! or any of the Jon Scieszka's Trucktown series to use to send young gearheads rolling off to a power bedtime.

This little book really revved up the reviewers' engines. Here are a few of them cranking up rhapsodies of prose for this one: "Lichtenheld's detailed and textured illustrations, rendered in wax oil pastels on vellum paper, perfectly complement the fun, rhyming text, cleverly personifying each truck with expressive eyes and amusing details. ...Recommended for vehicle- and bedtime-themed storytimes, this is sure to be a hit with truck-loving preschoolers." -(School Library Journal, starred review);" "A delightful debut." says The New York Times ; and not to be knocked out of the praise race, Booklist adds, " A standout picture book, especially for those who like wheels with their dreams."

Watch the book's brief and breezy trailer here, and you'll see why kids will really DIG this book.

John Scieszka's Truck Town: Smash! Crash! by John Scieszka

For those kids for whom knocking down the blocks is more fun that stacking them up, Jon Scieszka's Smash! Crash! (Jon Scieszka's Trucktown) is right down their construction site.

Two anthropomorphic trucks, Jack, a semi, and Dan, a dump truck, are definitely destruction derby guys. Their headlight eyes glaze over, their engines rev, and dust and traffic cones fly through the air whenever they meet:

"What should we do, Jack?"

"What we always do, Dan!"

"SMASH! CRASH! SMASH! CRASH!"

When a foreboding shadow falls over them and a big voice yells, "HEY, YOU TWO!", though, the two trucks take off with a fast "Uh oh! Gotta go!"

Jack and Dan look all over town for some buddies to smash and crash with them, but Manny the Cement Mixer, Monster Truck Max, and Izzy the Ice Cream Van are all busy with their day jobs. Finally Gabriela Garbage Truck and Road Grader Kat are willing IF the guys will play pirates with them. Jack and Dan agreeably smash and crash up some junk to form a perfect pirate fort.

Just then the ominous shadow and deep voice returns. It's Rosie the Wrecker Crane, looming over them and booming out, "HEY, YOU TWO! I WANT YOU. I WANT YOU TO..."

The two trucks cower. "Oh, no! No go!" they whimper. As the flap page is lifted to open up a demolition scene, Rosie roars,

"I WANT YOU TO SMASH! I WANT YOU TO HELP ME CRASH!

"Oh," says Dan, "We can do that!" Joyfully Semi-Cab Jack and Dump Truck Dan pull up and help Wrecker Rosie crash and smash down a condemned building with great glee, making a joyful noise and stirring up glorious clouds of smoke and dust.

In this first of several in Scieszka's Truck Town series, most of the merry mayhem comes from the computer-assisted illustrations of talented artists David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon. In future sequels readers are introduced to other citizens of Truck Town, the do-gooder firetrucks Hook & Ladder Lucy and Pumper Pat, Rescue Rita the Copter, Tow Truck Ted, and the bully Big Rig. This series should be King of the Road with kids who love heavy metal muscle machinery.

For more fun with some mischievous machines see also my earlier review of David Gordon's Hansel and Diesel.

In the Zone: Construction Zone by Cheryl Willis Hudson

Who can resist the drama of the rising man-made mountain--a huge, towering, complex structure alive with human activity and imagination?

Cheryl Hudson's Construction Zone is a three-year celebration of this modern wonder, the account of the construction--from architect's idea to the bustling, humming human workplace that is Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Stata Center in Cambridge. Richard Sobol's photos, from closeups of architect Frank O. Gehry's documents and drawings to sweeping wide shots of huge yellow power shovels and soaring cranes, dutifully detail the progress of this one-of-a-kind skyscraper as it rises beside the Charles River.

Hudson's text carefully tells the story, stopping frequently to explain and define terms, set off in bright yellow construction-tape boxes at page bottom, and occasionally rising to soaring prose as the building begins it own life.

Nighttime falls at the construction zone.

It is quiet and still.

Inside the building lights are shining. Outside trees have been planted on a rooftop.

The pieces of the puzzle have finally fit into place.

Pair this one with Deborah Hopkinson's Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building which tells the unforgettable story of the building of an earlier iconic skyscraper, the Empire State Building, reviewed here in my post of November 23, 2007.