Cars - The story behind them!

Like most boys, my son too is car crazy and thanks to the Disney movie ‘Cars’, he feels that each car has a personality of its own. As I drive him around, he is constantly peering out the window seeing other cars and assigning them different names, attributing gender and depending on how their hoods look, guessing their current “state of mind’. For instance, a red car is male and by default named ‘Lightening Mcqueen’ (the protagonist in the movie ‘Cars’), a Mercedes Benz, S class seems angry with clenched teeth and an SUV is a big bully Abhay doesn’t like! Our car is definitely male, although during most of the week, it’s a female behind its steering wheel! In fact, Abhay even gets to decide where I should park the car on our apartment drive. First, he will inspect the next car parked, how 'he/she' looks, whether 'he/she' will be buddies with our car and so on and so forth. If he believes the they’ve developed a bond of friendship, I am bound to park my car next to 'him/her' everyday, even if there's a spot closer to the entrance! So these days, as I approach my apartment, I let out a silent prayer hoping to find a parking space next to my car’s so called ‘pal’!! I so yearn for the days when parking my car used to be such a mundane job!

So when I found a book on race cars in the library, I knew I had a hit in my hands! The book is “The Wheels on the Race Car” by Alexander Zane and illustrated by James Warhola. As the title indicates this is a Grand Prix take on the popular nursery rhyme “Wheels of the Bus go round and round”. As the race begins, the wheels on the race cars go round and round, the engines go vroom-vroom-vroom, the drivers yell go-go-go and the cars zip-zip-zip past each other. Your race car fan gets to see the pit crew going zizz-zizz-zizz, the gas can filled up sounding glug-glug-glug and the drivers speed on back going full throttle with the red car being the first to see the checkered flag going swish-swish-swish! So if you’ve got a future NASCAR aficionado at home, this book is for you!