Tuesday Storytime: Road Work

Ok, the dinosaurs aren't building a road, exactly, but all the same equipment is in play, and I can't help it: DINOSAURS using giant earthmovers! It's close enough.

Dinosaur Dig!
Penny Dale
ISBN: 9780763658717
A varied crew of dinosaurs (pre-feathered, sadly) work with a varied set of earthmoving equipment on a mystery structure.

Our endpapers give us a nice listing and illustrative catalog of our dinos and our machines, and the story inside is quick and rhythmic, with lots of onomatopoiea and big construction noises as the dinos work tirelessly on their strange wavy, undulating concrete pit in the ground.

Easy Street
Rita Gray, illustrated by (model-maker and diorama-creator) Mary Bono
ISBN: 9780525476573
Adorable chubby diverse road-worker dolls inhabit a layered diorama "slice of street."

I think this book would never have impressed me as much as it does if it weren't for the illustrations.  Those dioramas are simply amazing, and the textures involved in the creation of the in-progress street and background layers are simply unbelievable.  I love looking at it.  I really wish I could have access to the original: lots of those layers look like they're made from sandpaper and I would LOVE to have that textural grounding available to the kids as well.  Anyway, the rhyming is short and direct, very repetitive, and covers the basics in workmanlike language.

Work, Dogs, Work: A Highway Tail
James Horvath
ISBN: 9780062189707
Horvath's crew of worker dogs tackles a highway construction job in this cute rhyming tail-er, tale.

This book is probably way too close in content to Easy Street to really do together, but I'm calling it purposeful repetition to build conceptual awareness, and running with it.  These lanky energetic dogs are building the world's most complicated highway, with bridges, overpasses, tunnels, and quagmires to overcome before they connect the city to the ultimate destination: the beach.

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 5: Engineering (Summer Reading Program)

And finally for the older kids:

I recycled Block City because it's important for kids to have exposure to classics and to poetry, so even though it's a bit juvenile for this group, I'm doing it anyway.  Everybody should have the cultural notion of playing with blocks and creating something wonderful in your mind.


Finishing us out for the day (I'm doing three today, despite the heat, because they were sad that I only did two last week) are:


Building Our House
Jonathan Bean
ISBN: 9780374380236
Dense, but really interesting.  Gail Gibbon's How a House is Built for the older set, with the bonus that it's actually a true story!  The photographs at the end of the story (of the real house during construction) were confusing to the kids - they thought they were looking at the ruins of the old house!  Otherwise, they enjoyed the idea of building their own home, and the idea of having "parties" to work just blew their minds.


Dinosaur Dig!
Penny Dale
ISBN: 9780763658717
Brightly colored dinosaurs work with realistic earthmovers in a vibrant, gritty environment to create something cool for themselves.  The kids liked the idea of a pool, but they thought that the author should have called it a water park because it had slides and fountains in it.