What Do Wheels Do All Day? - Hardcover

April Jones Prince

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618563075 ISBN 13: 9780618563074

Publisher: Clarion Books, 2006

Synopsis

Yeah, what do wheels do all day?
Well . . . they push . . . race . . . stroll . . . fly . . . whiz . . . and spin . . . all day long!

Simple, direct text, combined with brilliant cut-paper relief illustrations, captures kids’ fascination with “things that go” and opens their minds to the wide variety of wheels and what they do.

About this title

About the Authors

April Jones Prince is a children’s book author and freelance editor. She published Twenty-one Elephants and Still Standing, a story about P. T. Barnum and the Brooklyn Bridge, with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Giles Laroche, a master of cut-paper relief sculptures, captures stories from world cultures and history that can’t be told with photographs. Reviewers have called his art “truly masterful,” “mind-bogglingly good,” and “a visual feast.” He lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

Reviews

PreSchool-K–A colorful concept book on a subject that fascinates young readers. The brief rhyming text and precise artwork feature different types of wheels performing many jobs: Push/Pull/Pedal/Tow/Wheels help to make us go. Square vignettes offer numerous close-up examples, while single- and double-page pictures show broader scenes depicting bikes, a skateboard, a golf cart, a helicopter, a tire swing, and more. The striking collage art consists of paper cutouts that have been layered to provide dimension and enhanced by drawing and painting. The phrase, Wheels soar into the sky, is illustrated with the dramatic image of a Ferris wheel resplendent in bright primary colors and set against a starlit backdrop, perfectly capturing the thrill and function of this engineering marvel. Sometimes wheels spit and sputter is accompanied by a spread packed with a crisply hued array of cars. Puffs of smoke coming from several tailpipes indicate a traffic jam, and each unique automobile has its own passengers and details. The anticipatory quality of the rhymes and the detailed visuals will help children to guess the next word, making this a fun choice for storytime. It will also be a hit with the train- and truck-loving crowd.–Janet S. Thompson, Chicago Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PreS-Gr. 2. This handsome, large-format picture book points out common uses of wheels in a short, rhyming text, brightly illustrated with distinctive collage illustrations. The wheels in question are mainly related to transportation and recreation, from bus to wheelchair, from skateboard to Ferris wheel. Laroche's distinctive collage compositions, created from textured papers and enhanced by painted backgrounds, demonstrate a fine sense of depth. Though effective individually, the text and artwork don't always work together; the illustration for the line "Sometimes wheels spit and sputter," for instance, shows cars and vans tightly packed in traffic. Something may be spitting and sputtering (the vehicles? the outwardly cheerful drivers?), but the wheels? Quibbles aside, teachers looking for picture books supporting units on simple machines will be happy to have such a simply written, well-illustrated picture book on hand. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618563075
• ISBN 13: 9780618563074
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Giles Laroche
• Number of pages: 32