Machines at Work by Byron Barton

Machines at Work by Byron Barton

Rating: 4.5 stars

You know how when you have a baby, they give you a bunch of stuff when you check out? Each time we left, barely managing the new baby in our arms, we got a bunch of newborn diapers (helpful), a booger-sucker (super helpful--should have grabbed a second), tons of samples and coupons for formula (not so helpful, I breastfed our kids), cheap diaper bags (um...wasteful), and other things I don't even remember. I think that in these grab-bags of stuff, tucked away in a pocket to read when you're up in the middle of the night, should be a book or two. If you have a boy, then Machines at Work or anything else by Byron Barton should be one of them. (I don't mean to be sexist here...Lorelei likes this book just as much as Ben! But, well...there's just some connection between boys and machines, just like there is between girls and horses.)

Barton's drawings are what grabbed me at the library. We first got Building a House and I was captured by its simplicity--the sentences, yes, but also the drawings. It was as if--and I know this won't come out as a complete compliment, but hear me out--his 8 year-old son (that I'm making up right now) did them. And I think that's great--this is one of the few books that I think Lorelei could look at the pictures of and say "I can draw that." It'll be a few more years, of course, till she can, but Barton's drawings are a bit more achievable than Tomie DePaola's or Eric Carle's.

We love to read Machines at Work out loud, together. I know that it would only be half as entertaining to my kids if I left out the sound effects of each page. I have no idea what a crane crashing a building actually sounds like, but both of my kids can mimic the sound I completely made up that I do at least five times before turning the page! And when the workers eat lunch, we make them munch and sip and munch and sip and, I confess, burp every now and then.

All of Barton's works are just great foundations. Dinosaurs is the basic story of when they lived, how many there were, and the variety of the species. Building a House has, I'm guessing, 15 sentences, from grassy knoll to a family moving in. Now, anyone who has ever seen a house go up in a subdivision realizes that it's much more complicated than that. But how wonderful, for our kids, Barton has provided an uncomplicated story of a bunch of basic things. We really look forward to reading the rest of his book!