Busy Street

November 1, 2021

PreS-Gr 1-An animal mother and youngster head out for a day of driving around town in this beginning reader. On the busy streets they see a wide variety of vehicles, driven by an equally wide variety of animals. The animals, who range from lions to dinosaurs to skunks, drive everything from tow trucks to school buses. The pages are bursting with candy-colored illustrations; the text is less a story and more a collection of four-line rhymes about each vehicle, but that won't bother young fans of things that go. VERDICT While this will not stand out on the crowded beginning reader shelf, kids who love cars will be quite satisfied.-Heather Webb, Worthington Lib., OH

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December 1, 2021
Mommy and Bonnie--two anthropomorphic rodents--go for a joyride and notice a variety of conveyances around their busy town. The pair encounter 22 types of vocational vehicles as they pass various sites, including a fire engine leaving a firehouse, a school bus approaching a school, and a tractor trailer delivering goods to a supermarket. Narrated in rhyming quatrains, the book describes the jobs that each wheeled machine does. The text uses simple vocabulary and sentences, with sight words aplenty. Some of the rhymes don't scan as well as others, and the description of the mail truck's role ("A mail truck brings / letters and cards / to mailboxes / in people's yards) ignores millions of readers living in yardless dwellings. The colorful digitally illustrated spreads are crowded with animal characters of every type hustling and bustling about. Although the art is busy, observant viewers may find humor in details such as a fragile item falling out of a moving truck, a line of ducks holding up traffic, and a squirrel's spilled ice cream. For younger children enthralled by vehicles, Sally Sutton's Roadwork (2011) and Elizabeth Verdick's Small Walt series provide superior text and art and kinder humor. Children who have little interest in cars, trucks, and construction equipment may find this offering a yawner. Despite being advertised as a beginner book, neither text nor art recommend this as an engaging choice for children starting to read independently. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Smoother rides are out there. (Picture book. 3-5)

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March 1, 2022
Grades K-1 Out for a car ride with Mommy, young Bonnie notices all the vehicles they pass: garbage trucks, street sweepers, tractor trailers, school buses, pavers and road rollers, trucks for moving and mail, fire engines, car carriers, buses, front-end loaders, concrete mixers, crane and dump trucks, and more. Along the way they stop while a family of ducks crosses the road, wait for a train to pass, and purchase more gasoline. And as they return home Bonny falls asleep. Miller's rhymed couplets are accompanied by artwork featuring bright, neon colors, simple shapes, minimal backgrounds, a cast of anthropomorphized animal characters, and striking endpapers that depict various road signs. A worthy sequel to the works of Richard Scarry, this will be popular with vehicle enthusiasts who are just beginning to read.

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