Heavy duty trucks at work!

Like most boys, Abhay too is fascinated by any construction work, especially when the work involves huge earth movers and excavators. In fact, there’s one happening right across my parent’s apartment and Abhay’s favorite pastime at his grand-parents’ house now, is to gawk at the giant sized crane and backhoe, while admiring the construction crew who work those machines.  My mother who is adept at weaving stories around Abhay’s favorite themes (like race cars, buses, trucks) has now graduated into making up stories with construction vehicles as central characters and Abhay is the protagonist calling the shots at the construction site, in Bob-the builder style! Similarly, we have a house being built opposite ours and Abhay couldn’t have asked for anything else! Since in the US, one doesn’t get to see a house built from the ground up, as often as in India, we too had forgotten what it feels like to have huge piles of sand, cement and bricks unloaded literally in front of our doorstep!  While we adults consider any construction work as nuisance, children don’t see it that way!!! They can’t be bothered by the inconvenience caused, or the emanating noise and the dust; instead all they see are mighty machines at work! May be if we see the world through their eyes, we wouldn’t have that many complaints! J

Anyway, making up stories of rivalry between cement mixers and excavators is something only Abhay’s grandma can do, I am a traditionalist – I look to books! So today I read “Heavy Duty Trucks” by Joyce Milton and illustrated by Richard Courtney. Since it was a Level 3 Early Reader, I read it more like a picture book. This book makes an interesting read to your little truck lover, as it has him wonder what would it be like to drive a big truck. In fact, this book figures as a mini-encyclopedia of trucks – describing different kinds of trucks, their different names, their various features, how they are operated, and in what circumstances they serve best, so on and so forth. From trailer trucks and auto haulers to tractors and corn planters, from street sweepers and garbage trucks, to bulldozers and back hoes – it has everything your little truck lover wants to know about heavy duty trucks!  You read this to him and don’t blame me, if he says he wants to grow up to be a truck driver! J