Title: Airplanes; Machines at Work
Author/Illustrator: Byron Barton
Reviewer: Kelli Cree
My son (almost 2) really loves Byron Barton's books. HisCheck out Airplanes and Machines at Work or any of a million other Barton books at Amazon [amazon.com]
favorites are Airplanes and and Machines at Work.Airplanes is a nice board book with very clear pictures and simple words. The story is circular: at the start you see the sky, then the jet, and at the end of the story the plane is just taking off from the ground. The middle of the story has the jet passing smaller planes doing things (landing on water, writing a message, dusting the crops). The jet lands, unloads passengers, is maintained (by a bunch of trucks & people), loads passengers and takes off.
We like to take the story with us when we fly out of our local airport (San Jose, CA), which still uses stairways to access the planes, just as in the book. While we're on the ground, it's fun to see the pictures in the book are just like what's really happening out the windows.
Machines at Work has a similar illustration style as Airplanes: bright colors, simple lines. My favorite thing about this book is that there are clearly women construction workers as well as men. The rhythm of the words works well -- and there's even a break for lunch in the middle.
My son loves these books as well. "I Want to Be An Astronaut" is his all-time favorite. He loves to look at the pictures. Nice and simple.
We have several of Barton's books and at 2.5 my son has them memorized. My husband and I laugh at the Machines at Work, in a cynical manner, razing the structure that looks like our home and the tree to build a new building.
My husband's least favorite part about the book is the bulldozer pushing the tree into the ground. And of course, the fact that the thing that they are building a big box store or something equally giant.
thanks for the recommendation. I picked up Trucks last night for my son's first b-day.
We just found the Japanese version of Airplanes tonight; the kid's been obsessed with planes since our trip over; finding this book, was like a hairband scoring a dimebag on the road.
Our 20-month old requests Machines At Work every night. Every. Night. But somehow we don't mind. Count us among the many who praise the inclusion of female construction workers and sigh at the bulldozing of the tree. I would be eaten alive by my own construction industry family if I didn't mention that "Mix the cement"" should technically be "Mix the concrete" and Lift that beam" should actually read "Lift that column".
Out little guy also loved Trains when he was younger and I am about to purchase My Car, which has the same simple style, minimalist/toddler phrasing, and even a surprise ending of sorts.
I didn't think I was the only one noticing the tree being bulldozed - now I know for sure. We discovered Machines at Work after a few other Barton books that my son and I absolutely loved so I was actually taken aback by it - to the point that I wanted to recaption the page to read "transplant that tree" :]