Dig, Scoop, Ka-boom!

by Joan Holub, David Gordon (Illustrator)

Overview

A construction site crew and their trucks are busy at work in this rhyming Step 1 early reader!

Dump truck, mixer, and digger, and crane—all the vehicles children love to play with are working hard on the job. But, readers are in for a surprise—the construction "crew" is actually a group of young friends engaged in a fun day of dramatic play with their toy trucks! This brief but action-packed reader is perfect for emergent readers who love to build and are fans of vehicles that dig, scoop, and sometimes go ka-boom!

Step 1 readers have big type, easy words, and rhyme and rhythm to support children who know the alphabet and are ready to read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375869105
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	06/25/2013
Series:	Step into Reading Book Series: A Step 1 Book
Pages:	24
Sales rank:	605,597
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 3.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	300L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 6 Years

About the Author

JOAN HOLUB has written and/or illustrated over 70 books for children, including the popular Step into Reading title Shampoodle.

DAVID GORDON has has written and illustrated many children's books, among them Hansel and Diesel, The Three Little Rigs, The Ugly Truckling, and Smitten. He is also a contributing illustrators to Jon Scieszka's New York Times bestselling series, Trucktown. David has art directed and/or worked on visual development, layout, and character design for numerous production companies from Lucasfilm to Pixar.

Editorial Reviews

An accessible, rhyming text drives this story-with-a-twist about a construction site, inviting new readers to hone their emerging skills. Initial spreads depict a variety of vehicles engaged in digging, scooping, lifting and so on, detailing the activities of a construction site. Varied visual perspectives in the art draw the eyes to the different machines, but they can be disorienting--particularly in the worm's-eye view on the spread reading "Digger's teeth bite the ground," which does not show the "[t]racks skid[ding] around" as indicated by the text. On the other hand, while some readers may wonder why the vehicles' operators are not seen in the art, this omission is satisfyingly resolved in a long-shot spread that depicts a group of children playing with toy trucks in a sand pile. The vehicles are clearly miniversions of those from prior pages, and it's refreshing to see both boys and girls and at least one child of color included in the group "working like a team." From here, the narrative draws the children's play to a conclusion by book's end, providing readers with a fictive parallel to their own accomplishments in finishing the book: "Good work, crew!" An early-reader book to build on. (Early reader. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews