Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka

Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon

Rating: 5 stars

This is a great, great book for boys!  I'm bummed I've only just found it.  Jon Scieszka is the creator of the blog Guys Read, a blog created to help boys become life-long readers.  I'm all for that!

In this book, he simply but cleverly rewrites all the classic nursery rhymes to make them dirty and funny and...truck-y!  And David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon add some super cute, sometimes silly, sometimes funny illustrations to compliment the nursery rhyme.

Here are a few examples:

Patty Cake, Patty Cake 

Patty cake, patty cake, Dumper Dan.
Dump me some dirt as fast as you can.
Slide it and drop it and mark it DD,
And pile it in the lot for Melvin and me. 

Jack and Kat 

Jack and Kat raced up the hill
To burn some crazy rubber.
Jack zoomed down,
Right through Trucktown,
And Kat came scraping after.

This is a fantastic birthday book for a 2- or 3- year old boy (or truck-obsessed girl).

Jon Scieszka has written a few Trucktown books after this; they are a great preschool/kindergarten series you should definitely know about if, like me, you've got a boy or two in your charge.  We've read a bunch of them and like them...check them out here.

Off Go Their Engines, Off Go Their Lights by Janice Milusich

Off Go Their Engines, Off Go Their Lights by Janice Milusich, illustrated by David Gordon

Rating: 4.5 stars

Sometimes Ben is just a lucky guy, even at the library.  As any almost two year old does, he thinks that pulling a lot of books off of a shelf is way cool.  Of course, I try to discourage such destructive behavior at both at home and at the library--but especially at the library!  At home, sometimes it's just easier to give him the ten minutes to create the mess he so desires...and clean up after bedtime.

This is one book that Ben grabbed, randomly, without seeing its cover, from the stacks.  It's a really nice bedtime book for boys (and girls) who are fairly vehicle-crazy--that's Ben!

Milusich writes the story with a soothing, quiet tone.  A taxi picks up a mom and her son, and they pass by a pumper truck, a dump truck (Ben's favorite), a brown delivery truck, a police car, and an ice cream truck; she explains what they do in one line, and puts them to sleep with another.  One by one you say good night to each truck, and on the last page the mom says good night to her son.

It does have a lot of words in it, so if you've got an impatient little guy/girl on your lap, you might want to wait till 2 or older for this one if you're going to read it at bedtime.

While we've never read it at bedtime (I had to stop taking library books to bed because Ben kept wanting them in his crib, and I'd have several repairs to do in the morning.  When he learns that ripping is not synonymous with reading, we'll change the rule about where library books can and cannot go), we've read it a lot, and Ben "reads" this book by himself a few times a day.  Ben even wiggled himself into Jonathan's lap over the weekend with it.  Our male weim, Guidry, even had to get in on the action, so I couldn't resist taking a picture of all the boys in our family reading together.