PICTURE BOOK FICTION REVIEW : Mucky Truck by Ammi-Joan Paquette
ABOUT THE BOOK
When a little truck gets stuck in the mud, his other truck friends come to his aid. At the end of the day, it's fire engine to the rescue! And the five friends celebrate by playing together in the slippy, sloshy, oh-so-mucky mud. With bouncy verse and visual drama, this read-aloud picture book will be a hit with preschoolers and fans of Little Blue Truck.
REVIEW
Mucky Truck presents an entertaining story about a truck that dives into a "sticky, tacky" mud puddle and gets stuck. His truck friends, Crane, Digger, and Forklift, attempt to help him get free but get stuck themselves. What they need, it turns out, is water, and a lot of it. Which truck friend could provide such help? And what will the vehicles do if they manage to get free? This book will be a hit with young truck lovers. The illustrations are bright and fun with amusing details (Mucky Truck sticks out his tongue while trying to vroom himself free). The text is rhyming and fun to read aloud with lots of great adjectives. The font and coloring of some of the test highlights key words and makes the text jump out at the reader which makes it easier to read. The only issues I had with the book are rather nit-picky ones and ones that child readers are not likely to even notice. In the illustrations, as the trucks get stuck, they move in the illustrations, changing direction and location next to each other, which didn't seem consistent to me with a truck getting stuck and being unable to move. The other thing that bothered me at first, doesn't any more now that I've had a chance to think about it. It has to do with the ending, so, SPOILER. After getting free the trucks immediately turn around and go back to play in the mud (Mucky Truck never leaves the puddle just starts zooming around in it). After thinking about it, I realized that that is exactly what some children would do if they got stuck and then freed. Overall, a fun book with a child-friendly story.
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