#48 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet
Look what just zoomed in — a spiffy convoy of hardworking trucks all featured in a brand new picture book by Samantha R. Vamos and Ryan O’Rourke!
Start the engines.
Lift and load.
Shift the gears and
hit the road.Vroom! Rumble! Zoom!
Alphabet Trucks.
Maybe you’re already wondering: could there actually be a different kind of truck for each letter of the alphabet? What about Q, V, X, and Z? We all know how much they love to cause trouble.
Relax. Clever Samantha has got those rascals covered, and along with the familiar pickup truck, tow truck, and cement mixer, she throws in quite a few less commonly known vehicles to keep things interesting: knuckle-boom truck, lowboy, winch truck.
A is for apple truck,
carting produce to the store.B is for box truck,
with a rolling rear door.
They’re all described in jaunty rhyming couplets that explain each truck’s job, while O’Rourke’s crackerjack retro-style illustrations show the trucks in action, two per double page spread. Young readers will enjoy studying each scene, especially because the upper and lower case letters take on a life of their own — sitting in apple trees, bouncing along the street, being picked up by a crane or carried by movers one by one.
I’m convinced Judi Barrett wrote the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs book just for me. A story about edible precipitation, with mashed potato snow, hamburger storms and SOUP rain (forcryingoutloud) has my name written all over it, does it not? My toes still tingle when I read about the giant pancake that covered the school, and how the residents of ChewandSwallow set sail on rafts made from giant pieces of stale bread (holy peanut butter).
And then, some 19 years later, Ms. Barrett gifted me with Pickles to Pittsburgh. I swooned over the giant airlifted hot dogs and tuna fish sandwiches and a charitable world where “there is always enough food for everyone.”
Jama's Alphabet Soup 