If You HAVE To Read A Truck Book

We recently had a weekend guest, one who is very fond of truck books. Trucks are not my favorite subject to read about. That's mainly because the truck books I've seen are usually about trucks as a subject. "Here's this kind of truck, that kind of truck. Oh, and look at the big tire!"

A trip to the library provided us with a couple of truck books more to my taste.

Five Trucks by Brian Floca involves, yeah, five trucks. "The first truck is large and heavy." There's your sentence for the first two-page spread. "The second truck is small and quick" is on the second. This appears to be a traditional truck book that just lists things about...trucks. However, all these trucks can be found at the same place--airports. The point, and the book does have one, is that all these trucks are necessary to support airplanes. The text doesn't come right out and tell us that, though. We have to work it out. That makes a truck book a lot less mind-nu--I mean, a lot more interesting.


My Truck is Stuck! by Kevin Lewis with illustrations by Daniel Kirk is a rhyming tale of a dog driver whose truck does, indeed, get stuck. He gets plenty of help from various other vehicles and their drivers. Nothing seems to work.

The beauty of this story is that it is a story in which a truck driver (even though he is a dog) has a goal and an experience. Before I got to the end, I was wondering, How will he get his truck unstuck?