Customer Reviews

C is for Construction: Big Trucks and Diggers from A to Z (Caterpillar)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are children, yes-- both boys and girls, that are extremely fascinated by large and very capable machines. In fact, if you are a parent who has to stop at every pit, new road, or excavation because you have a child who says, "Mom!/Dad!, STOP!!! I want to look at this," this book is for your family.

Children see major equipment all the time. ... Because Caterpillar had the wisdom to put these machines in a context at their level (i.e. learning the alphabet because a BIG machine begins with the letter), it makes it easier for parents and educators to help children learn the reasons why to learn to read. Each letter of the alphabet has a giant Caterpillar machine or some aspect of it that goes with it. The page features a photograph of the machine or the part with an easily understood description of it.

Caterpillar, the company, is featured in this alphabet book and I never thought this would happen. They saw the connection to children. ... I am sending this alphabet book to children of the children who grew up with sandboxes with toy equipment to move the sand around.

Though a commercial for the Cat, it is great for children. It's good! It belongs in elementary school libraries and in the home libraries of busy boys and girls. Active sandboxes demand it. . . and so do future civil engineers!

If you are tired of all the cartoon-like, euphemistic, personified, books depicting cars/trucks/machines with smiley faces then this book is for you. My 2 year old is intrigued by the real machines he sees in the book that is also represented to him in his everyday environment. This book is definitly for older children but like I said- even younger ones will love it!

We checked out this book from the library for the past 4 weeks and now I'm on here to buy it. My son LOVES it and we read it at least 2-3 times a day! It's great for the letters but also for any little one that loves construction trucks.

I purchased this book for my son and have been happy with the contents. This book shows pictures of various Caterpillar brand construction equipment with the correct name in large colorful pictures. If you are looking for a book that includes lots of photos of different types of construction equipment and describes the function then this is for you.

This book was a big hit at Christmas with my 18-month old nephew. He opened it, climbed into his father's lap and looked at each page. The book has great pictures and the pages were easy to turn with his small hands.

I sent this to my little grandson who lives in another state, so this is not a first-hand review, but my daughter-in-law tells me that the little guy just loves it.

The pictures are nice, but the way they relate to the names provided isn't always clear. For letter A, there's a pic of a dumptruck (head-on, slightly from above). It's a dumptruck dumping a load. But they call it an "articulated truck". You can't tell in any way shape or form from that image that the truck articulates when it turns. So if I try to use this to teach the alphabet, my son will learn D (dumptruck), B, C... I can't even use that picture to explain what "articulated" means, that's how far off it is. It's not that great a book. We use it just to look at pictures.

Overall, a great book because of the pictures. A few alphabet items are cop outs: Keep Out, Yellow Zone. My son noticed the Steamroller is missing from the inside cover, which has outlines of lots of other major construction vehicles. There's also a graphic typo where the Off Road Dump Truck is shown for a different dump truck picture. The pictures though are great and my 2yr son loves flipping through the book.

My 18 month old son LOVES this book, I just wish it were available with the thick pages instead of paper ones. It has real life photos of working tractors.

My 2 1/2 year old son loves all things construction (which is not a surprise since his daddy works for CAT). So, when I saw this book we snagged it as a nice surprise for a long car trip. My son loves the HUGE real-life photos of the various different machinery (24 pages in all as they combine w/x & y/z). But with those HUGE photos comes a HUGE book (9" x 11") that is hard for my son to handle and turn pages. He sometimes gets frustrated and as a result several pages are already pretty tattered and he's only had the book for a month. An older child would probably be able to handle it just fine, but something to keep in mind.

Also, I wish the letter on the page was a little more emphasized and that the text was slightly larger and easier to read (not that my son is reading yet, but it would make it easier on us!)

But all in all, it is a good book and my son loves it, but just not "great". If he was probably a few months older my above complaints would probably not even exist! Would recommend the book for 3 years+.