Monster Trucks!

by Mark Todd

Overview

Filled with playful verse and lively illustrations of all types of trucks, each with a distinct personality, this bright book is the ultimate pick for storytime with truck-loving toddlers. There is the milk truck, Señor Moo, and the snow plow, Mr. Salty, and don’t forget every little one’s favorite, Big Red, the fire truck. Included at the end of the book is a guide to these fourteen types of trucks with all sorts of interesting features and facts about each one. Now in a chunky board book format for the littlest readers! 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544423558
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/03/2015
Pages:	26
Sales rank:	1,134,681
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

Like many kids raised in the 70's, Mark was influenced at an early age by Star Wars and comic books. Unlike many kids, he grew up just a few miles from the Vegas strip, its neon and glitz looming over the city. He graduated with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and currently lives and works in the Los Angeles area with his wife, artist Esther Pearl Watson, their daughter Lili and Mr. Pickles, a lovely French Bulldog.

Editorial Reviews

"For junior aficionados of extra-heavy equipment, Todd offers a verbal and visual inventory of delights." Publishers Weekly

"Fourteen monster trucks are brought to life through giant cartoons that roar with personality and an enthusiastic text." School Library Journal

"In this crowd-pleasing portrait gallery, 14 burly, rugged, cartoon trucks pose against monochromatic, minimally detailed backgrounds, accompanied by equally muscular captions... Roar on!" Kirkus Reviews —

From the Publisher

For junior aficionados of extra-heavy equipment, Todd (The Pain Tree) offers a verbal and visual inventory of delights. Each spread features a short verse paean to one of 14 niftily nicknamed and personified vehiclesthere's Se or Moo the milk tanker, Smoosh the steamroller and Mish-Mash the concrete mixer. Opening each verse with the refrain "Monster trucks! Monster trucks!" Todd goes on to extol each vehicle's special attributes and importance with a deeply satisfying sonority. "Slime-sucking sweeper trucks," he writes in a tribute to Suds the sanitation truck. "Snorting and scrubbing with a big bristly brushcleaning the streets for the 9 o'clock rush." Large-scale cartoon "portraits," set against bold solid-colored backgrounds, strike a beguiling balance of detail and whimsy. Todd painstakingly delineates rivets, gears, hydraulics, tire treads and accoutrements (for example, the tow truck has hooked a sad-looking auto; a fierce Dalmatian runs alongside flag-waving Big Red, the New York City fire truck). He also turns grilles into recognizable expressions of resolve and determination, with most of the trucks sporting gritted teeth and expressive headlight eyes. The final page recaps the cast and offers the kind of technical informationweight, capacity, special features and so forththat aspiring truckers love to savor. Ages 3-7. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

PreS-Gr 2-Fourteen monster trucks are brought to life through giant cartoons that roar with personality and an enthusiastic text. Each bold spread introduces a different massive machine, such as a garbage truck named Stink ("Eating and crunching,/ munching and slurping./Just don't be around/when this guy starts burping"); Mr. Salty the snowplow; and Suds, a "Slime-sucking sweeper." Bright, solid-colored backgrounds allow the vehicles to take center stage. Large eyes glare from headlights and windshields, while grills and bumpers grin and grimace as the machines dig and lift, haul and move. Children can learn interesting facts about all of these trucks on the final page, where each vehicle's size, speed, and special features are listed. A good choice for storytime and one-on-one sharing, this book will spend more time on the road than on the shelf.-Carolyn Janssen, Children's Learning Center of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

In this crowd-pleasing portrait gallery, 14 burly, rugged, cartoon trucks pose against monochromatic, minimally detailed backgrounds, accompanied by equally muscular captions: "Monster trucks! / Monster trucks! / Big bulldozer trucks. / Scraping and shoveling / with a sneering tooth blade, / leveling the earth / for the roads to be laid." Todd waxes unabashedly anthropomorphic, endowing each driverless vehicle with both a square-jawed, stern-looking face and a pithy, masculine name like "Brutus, the moving truck," or "Se-or Moo, the milk tanker." The author supplies measurements and special features for each truck on a final page. Though even uncritical children might observe that Stink the garbage truck's face is on his back end, and that the forklift's "stiff upper lip" is actually a lower one, they probably won't mind. Roar on! (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews