I Am a Backhoe by Anna Grossnickle Hines

I Am a Backhoe by Anna Grossnickle Hines

Rating: 3.5 stars

The other day I had to get my car taken in for a very minor repair.  I'd already gone twice without the kids, but I was tired of all my with-the-sitter time taken up by the darn car shop.  Lorelei and Ben are really well-behaved, so this time they came with me.  Of course, it took longer than the 30 minutes my designated representative told me it would be.  So we took a walk.  Luckily for us, there was a construction site just a block away!

At 9:30 in the morning, the three of us walked along a very desolate part of the ex-burbs of Northern Virginia and watched some real backhoes do some work.  Ben could hardly contain his excitement when he saw a dump truck actually DUMP something!  And then, right next to the sidewalk, a tiny little digger (ok, I don't think the operator called it that, but I did) that was still on, just idling, waiting for its operator to come spur him into action.  I couldn't believe Ben resisted the temptation to reach out and touch it.  Next to this still-on machine was some other machine that I should know because I've read so many books like this, and leaning on it were three very filthy but very friendly construction dudes.  We of course said hello and good morning and smiled, but they were just perplexed as to what we were doing there.  Until they saw Ben jump up and down with excitement when a big backhoe came and scooped up some rocks RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!  Oh my gosh, the thrill of it!

Maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, I hope these cheap thrills last a lot longer!  The book is a good twist on the normal machine-book-for-little-boys genre that will never go out of style.  The little boy in the book acts out all the machines, which is pretty cute and actually really interests Lorelei, who chooses to read this book more often than Ben.  The other good little twist is that, at the end of the book, the little boy's father puts him on his back and acts like a flatbed truck.  His dad dumps him "into the big garage" (the sofa) and they finish the book by reading a book.  It ends: "I like trucks.  And so does Daddy."