Machines Go to Work in the City
by William Low; illus. by the author
Preschool     Holt     32 pp.
6/12     978-0-8050-9050-5     $16.99

Books don’t get much better than this for machinery-loving preschoolers. Listeners are first introduced to a particular situation involving vehicles, from a garbage truck to a tower crane to an airplane. What happens next? Lift a flap (which provides an extended scene of the problem at hand) and find out. For example, traffic has stalled because of a broken light. Can a police officer fix the light? Open the flap: “No, when the bucket truck arrives, the signal crew will fix the traffic light.” The tactile component here is thoughtfully varied in ways appropriate to the situation. Some flaps fold out; one depicting a crane using hydraulic jacks for extension flips up; and one, of a vacuum truck draining water from a subterranean broken pipe, opens downward to set the underground scene. Just as they did in Machines Go to Work (rev. 7/09), Low’s painterly illustrations display the drama and excitement of a bustling cityscape. The final spread shows an airplane ready for departure. Once it’s towed to the runway, it takes off and soars over the city, which is unveiled in a glorious finale as youngsters construct the scene by opening four flaps and creating a poster-sized panorama. Back matter shows each vehicle, complete with a definition and labels for important parts.

From the September/October 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.