Dig, dump, roll by Sally Sutton

Ill. by Brian Lovelock. Roadworks series. Walker Books, 2018. ISBN 9781760650056
(Ages: 2-5) Themes: Construction vehicles. This new instalment in the Roadworks series (Roadworks, Demolition and Construction) will delight young lovers of big vehicles. An eye-catching front cover with black and yellow construction tape and large, bold, heavy text matches the theme of the book, as do the bitumen endpapers. Each page gives the sound the machine makes (eg. "Crash-a-rumble smash-a-grumble") and some clues (picture clue as well as a clue about what it does), asking "What's at work?". The featured machines, all favourites of small children, are bulldozer, digger, dump truck, roller, concrete mixer and builders. As we find out at the end, a school is being built, "just for you". This does seem a little strange when the interested audience will mainly be pre-schoolers. In addition, the sounds are a little odd and when said aloud they don't particularly sound like the machine they are trying to emulate. The repeated rhyme "What's at work? Here's a clue: it will . . . for you" is great and young ones will love joining in with the simple refrain (e.g. "Digger, Digger, Coming through!".
Quite realistic, detailed pictures show the machines in profile, making it easy to compare and contrast the features of each. The last page showing labelled pictures of the machines is a fantastic feature as it uses proper terminology such as boom, swing gate and piston, although this could be a bit more detailed for this age group.
Nicole Nelson