Fire Truck by Peter Sis

Fire Truck by Peter Sis

Rating: 4 stars

Since it's basically Ben Week this week as Lorelei started preschool and he finally has the undivided attention of his mother, I made it a point to order books mostly for him--books that were age-appropriate and topic-appropriate.  The end result: holy smokes I'm going to read a lot about trucks this week!

Now this is a strange little book.  Ben loves fire trucks and firefighters and hopefully all things related to fire except fire itself, so when I saw this on a recommended reading list somewhere, I ordered it right up.  When we picked it up today, Ben was just as eager and curious as me to read it.  So we dug right in.

The text is simple--a little boy loves fire trucks; "fire truck" are the first words out of his mouth in the morning, and the last words out of his mouth at night.  The pictures are simple black and white except for the very red fire trucks--both Ben and I give that two thumb's up, so that's four thumb's up from our family.  But then the boy becomes a fire truck.  I found that a bit odd, but I guess there are little boys out there who probably aren't satisfied to just ride a fire truck.  That's so last week.  BEING a fire truck is way cooler.  Well, this book is for them. 

As the little boy-truck--a fire truck with a chest and head sticking out the back end--drives around, he seems to be having a great time.  There's a great double pull out page that shows the number and an image, getting the little reader to find 3 hoses, 4 blinking lights, etc.  I know Lorelei will love that page when she sees it.  The boy-truck rolls around saving toys and stuffed animals until he smells something good for breakfast: pancakes!  So he parks his truck, morphs into a little boy again, and eats some of those pancakes for breakfast.

This is a good book for a fire truck/firefighter collection, mostly because it's different than most of the books out there on the subject.  If Ben decides to be a fire truck for Halloween, I'll be sure to come back to this post and add a picture...that would be interesting!  As long as he doesn't insist on requiring a Dalmatian for the ensemble.  We've already got two high-strung dogs.  I can't handle a third!