Name that Vehicle!

By Katrina Morse for Family Reading Partnership

Garbage trucks, graders, backhoes, and snow plows. Front-end loaders, fire engines, and cranes. When you have a young child in your life who loves hard-working vehicles, you probably are learning all about them yourself. Do you have to stop with your child at every construction site to look at the action? Does your child point out 18-wheelers and police cars on the highway?

Young children are learning to name their world–to put words to what they see. Reading books about diggers, lifters, and emergency vehicles reinforces what you see in everyday life. Most of these books are in a convenient and durable board book format. Some are stories and some are just about recognizing the differences and learning the names.

Try some of these books to read with your very young child and then see how excited he or she is to name a vehicle you see in action!

• “Machines at Work” by Byron Barton. Big blocks of primary colors in Barton’s signature style depict different trucks and other hard working machines. The text is brief­–perfect for toddlers.
• “Tip Tip Dig Dig” by Emma Garcia. Collaged paper makes up the simple illustrations of trucks digging, moving, and shaping earth. Simple text gives noises for each vehicle. Roll, roll, roll and push, push, push–What are all these vehicles making together?
• “My Truck is Stuck” by Kevin Lewis, illustrated by Daniel Kirk. Silly repeating rhymes and funny illustrations tell the story of a truck that can’t move and needs help. Count how many cars and vehicles try to get the truck unstuck and watch the pictures closely for another storyline. This author and illustrator pairhas also created “Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo” and “Tugga-Tugga Tugboat.” 
• “Little Blue Truck” by Alice Schertle, illustrated by Jill McElmurry. This truck is stuck in the country on a mucky road and finds that some farm animals can help. Lyrical, rhyming text is full of truck and animal sounds. The story is one of friendship and helping others.
• “Road Builders” by B.G. Hennessy, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Simms Taback. This is a story all about how a road is built, from beginning to end. What does the crew do? Which construction vehicles are needed for which jobs? You’ll find out what each does, from cement mixers to pavers.