Dig Dig Digging - Hardcover

Mayo, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805068406 ISBN 13: 9780805068405

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2002

Synopsis

Busy machines for busy kids!

"Diggers are good at dig, dig, digging,
scooping up the earth and lifting and tipping.
They make huge holes with their dig, dig, digging.
They can work all day."

Trucks and tractors, fire engines and helicopters-they all like to work hard. But after a long, happy day of beep-beeping and vroom-vrooming, even the busiest engines need to rest. This bright, bouncy, noise-filled book brings together all the vehicles that children adore.

About this title

About the Authors

Margaret Mayo has written a number of books for children, including Dig Dig Digging and several collections of folk and fairy tales from around the world. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband and three children.

Alex Ayliffe has illustrated many books for children, as well as creating art for magazines and gallery exhibitions. She has traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, and Australia, and currently lives in Hertfordshire, England.

Reviews

reSchool-K-Bold, bright spreads present visual word poems about large trucks, tractors, and cranes and the work they do. Often the shape of the rhyme reflects the action performed by the machine. For example, the bold, black print describing fire engines arcs and curves like the water splashing from the fireman's hose. Text about the bulldozer bumps across the page. "Bulldozers are good at push, push, pushing, over rough, bumpy ground, scraping and shoving." The verse on every page ends with the refrain, "They can work all day." Although not all of the rhymes are equally satisfying, they successfully move readers from page to page, truck to truck. The large, simple images in vivid colors and wide, uncluttered spreads will appeal to young children. Stylized skyscrapers dot the horizon in contrasting colors of purple and pink or blue and white, against very blue, sunny skies. The people are all Lego-like in appearance. The last spread, at the end of a very busy book, quiets its colors, with motors off and machines at rest. This book will rev the engines of those youngsters who love vehicles.
Alice Casey Smith, Sayreville Public Schools, Parlin, NJ
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Cataloguing the world of heavy equipment, this vibrant square volume explores the unique capabilities of 11 vehicles, from construction trucks to rescue helicopters. On each spread, Mayo (Wiggle Waggle Fun) offers plenty of colorful adjectives and terse verbs: "Bulldozers are good at push, push, pushing, over rough, bumpy ground, scraping, and shoving." Ayliffe, who explored some of this territory before in The Busy Building Book, pictures two bulldozers, one yellow and the other red, attacking clods of dirt and showing trees no mercy as they maneuver around a hill at precarious angles. The artist works in brightly colored cut paper, adding just enough detail to the people and landscapes (the bumpy texture of caterpillar tracks, the grid work of a crane tower) to satisfy young enthusiasts. A refrain on each spread reminds readers that these distinctive vehicles share at least one similarity: "They can work all day." A final spread of a darkened town full of stilled vehicles demonstrates that even giant trucks and earthmovers need to turn off their engines: "Shhh! They can rest all night." Ages 3-5.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Ages 1-4. For all those young preschoolers who love heavy trucks and machines, here's a bright, noisy book to connect words and pictures with the excitement of the building site and the vroom of the streets. Each double-page spread is about one kind of vehicle--fire engine, tractor, digger, garbage truck, crane, transporter, dump truck, rescue helicopter, road roller, bulldozer--and the simple repetitive rhymes have the thumping rhythm of the machines in motion ("Diggers are good at dig, dig, digging, / scooping up the earth, and lifting and tipping. / They make huge holes with their dig, dig, digging"). The pictures, in clear shapes and brilliant colors, show people with machines swooshing fire hoses, loading garbage, rumbling and tumbling rocks, with power and immediacy. A great way to demonstrate to the lap-sitting crowd that books are about the thrilling things they see and the games they play. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805068406
• ISBN 13: 9780805068405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Ayliffe Alex
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32