Customer Reviews

Truck Big Book (A Mulberry Big Book)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book, a 1981 Caldecott Honor book, is a nearly wordless set of pictures that follow a red tractor-trailer truck across country as it makes a delivery. From the black of the end papers, Crews drops the reader immediately into the action as the story begins on the title page with the truck being loaded with colorful boxes of tricycles. From there, the truck begins its journey from New York through the Lincoln tunnel, passing truck stops and gas stations and enduring rain and traffic jams, until it crosses the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco where it unloads its cargo. The illustrations have an intense graphic quality, with sharp geometric shapes, heavy dark lines, and intense blocks of color. The style evokes the abstract shapes of road signs and intense colors of roadside attractions. The illustrations, printed on glossy paper, stretch across both pages and bleed to the edge of the page, drawing the reader further in to explore the pages. Children learning to read will be able to recognize many words in the road signs and on trucks and vans. Non-readers will enjoy spotting the red truck on each new page. The embedded storyline encourages children to follow a sequence of steps in a larger process, while the absence of words encourages children to elaborate on the action, making up their own stories to accompany the images.

When I ask my 3 year old son Charlie to choose three books for bedtime reading, this book is invariably chosen from his truck shelf of books. The book documents a tractor trailer's trip, using signs, light signals and lots of traffic and highways. He loves it and so do I. This book also won a Caldecott Medal for illustrations when it was first published. Highly recommended.

I bought this book when my son was 18 months old. He had NO interest at all in sitting still to look at books. He took one look at all those TRUCKS and was transfixed. From the day I brought this book home he showed a greater interest in his other books and at 3 1/2 he is an avid "reader".

This book is very popular in our house, getting my son to agree to story time (and thus the inevitable nap or bed time that follows) when he is in full fight mode. My two year old loves this book! I would give it five stars based on his love for it except for the fact that there are times that Mommy is not in the mood to be creative and make up her own story to it since it is strictly a picture book. Most of the time, it is not a problem, the pictures make the story easy to tell, but sometimes I am just not in the mood. However, my son adores this book and has learned how the pictures help tell the story as we discuss, for example, which way the truck will go when it reaches a fork in the road and how there is fog on the bridge. As a certified early childhood teacher, I know how important that skill is in learning how to read, so I love that about this book. All in all, this book is a wonderful addition to our home library.

I was able to use this book for a "Transportation" unit used in our Reading Program. It's full of colorful pictures and encourages children to come up with imaginative sentences and/or phrases. It helps students who are not able to read as well let you know what is going on in each picture. It helps with their visual comprehension and re-telling of stories without reading. This is a book that is great for "bilingual" students as well. It helps with their limited English and repeats words to aid in their visual literacy.

Students are enthusiastic and encouraged to think about what will happen next? From the first page we see a huge truck full of bicycles and we follow the truck on its journey to delivering the trucks to a store. Along its journey we are shown different scenery such as busy streets, busy highways, tunnels, rainy weather, the country, and what looks like San Francisco (bridges).

This book is also helpful in teaching students different transportation devices in our streets as well as reading street signs for safety. Wrong Way, One Way, and Stop signs are apparent in the pictures. As well, as cardinal directions such as North, East, West, (South doesn't appear, but could be taught).

It helps students/children learn about environmental print. This type of print is print that we see all around us on a day-to-day basis. Although, you may think that Environmental Print is not important, it actually is in helping students read. Colorful signs are displayed in the book with nonsense words, but it helps students read and predict what the signs could be used for.

Another idea in using this book could be for a farming/produce unit to help students/children understand how products such as milk, cheese, tomatoes, breads, and meat get to our supermarkets;A lot of students/children are unaware of this process.

My 1.5 year old boy loves this book. The illustrations are great in this book. There are no words so I've made up a story to go along with the pictures. We also point out the different cars, trucks, and busses in this book when we read.

If you're little one is a fan of cars, trucks, and busses, this is a great book.

Littlel boys like books about anything with wheels.. this is a fun book for litytle boys to begin their reading joys. A must in the library for little ones.

this book surprised me by having no words, but son still pesters me to "read" it every time he sees it....i HAVE to hide it sometimes!

I wasn't sure whether or not my son would enjoy the textless book but it has quickly become his favorite book! It is so bright and colorful and encourages me to make up different stories each time I read it to him.

My one year olds like to flip through this book. They love trucks, so anything with the theme works for them. Warning: if you are going to read this one aloud, you'll have to make up the story - no text.