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.)

Canine Skyscraper Caper: Build, Dogs, Build: A Tall Tail by Joseph Horvath

GET GOING, CREW.
WE'RE HEADING DOWNTOWN.
AN OLD BUILDING
NEEDS TO COME DOWN!

A mixed group of canine construction mutts--Duke, Roxy, Buddy, Max, Spot, and Spike--clap on their tool belts and hard hats and head off for their current job site, with their wrecking-ball crane ready to take down a derelict building.

Before long, the grader scrapes the scrap up and the Dig Dogs dump truck hauls off the old materials to be recycled, and the crew swings into construction mode. They lay the pipes for plumbing and power, pour concrete for the foundation, and start to construct the high steel framework. Nimble iron team dogs, "a high-flying breed," ride the orange steel girders as the cranes swing them into position.

THIS CREW IS THE BEST,
EACH DOG HIGHLY SKILLED,
LET'S KEEP GOING TOGETHER,
BUILD, DOGS, BUILD!

With a tip of the hard hat to P.D. Eastman's classic Go, Dog. Go! (I Can Read It All By Myself Beginner Books), in verse and art style, in his brand-new Build, Dogs, Build: A Tall Tail (Harper, 2014) Joseph Horvath takes those travelling dogs into the construction trades with bouncy rhymes and bright, jelly-bean colored illustrations of construction equipment and operators as a skyscraper goes up, complete with penthouse with pool where the builder dogs party and splash before moving on to their next job.

GREAT JOB, DOGS!
OUR WORK HERE IS THROUGH!
TOMORROW WE'RE OFF.
THERE'S A NEW JOB TO DO.

For kids who love BIG construction machinery, this book is a good introduction to the world of work in the building trades. Author Horvath actually provides a fairly detailed description of the up side of this skyscraper caper, step by step, from laying the pipes to laying the carpet and plumbing in the fixtures. The dogs are jaunty and jolly and the subject is a perennial favorite with primary-aged kids, as Horvath builds on the high interest of his target audience.   Pair this one with Horvath's equally lighthearted look at getting to the bottom of building in Horvath's earlier Dig, Dogs, Dig: A Construction Tail.