Construction site, spring delight An Easter lift-the-flap book

Toddler-PreS--Rinker and Ford bring to life the world of the construction site in this lift-the-flap board book. It's Spring, and the trusty machines are back in operation--Excavator, Dump Truck, and Cement Mixer get busy. When Crane Truck "grabs a load, then lifts his boom," Mama and baby ducks swim by from behind the reeds. Honk! Honk! call the trucks. Quack! Quack! reply the ducklings. As Skid Steer pushes with her blade, baby robins sing in a nearby tree. Signs of Spring are everywhere; tulips are in bloom, and rabbits and lambs frolic as the busy machines clear and haul. Rhyming text combines the workings of a building site with the natural world. Readers learn the function of each truck and lift the flap to find baby animals and spring flowers. When Excavator digs, "dirt starts to fly! Two little lambs look on nearby." The youngest readers will quickly pick up on the sing-song rhyming text and predict the surprise under each flap. Cheerful illustrations show friendly, tough machines with wide grins and determined expressions. Plenty of details provide the opportunity for little ones to pore over and discover something new with repeated readings. The final scene has the trucks and their new friends join in an Easter egg hunt. VERDICT Perfect for very young readers with a fascination for all things vehicular.--Sarah Webb

A new addition to the Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site board-book series celebrates spring's arrival, and Easter's too. As "warm sunshine melts the snow away," a construction site in what looks to be a remote rural area joyfully comes alive. Seven different occupational trucks begin their work, carrying out their specialized tasks. A concrete mixer pours concrete into a trench to make a foundation for a building, a crane truck lifts a huge wooden crate, a dump truck hauls away dirt, and so on. There are no humans pictured in the artwork; instead, the vehicles, which are anthropomorphically rendered with eyes, noses, and mouths, seem to have wills of their own. Each sturdily constructed double-page spread has a flap that, when lifted, reveals a lovely springtime surprise, from a duck and her ducklings swimming in a nearby lake to blooming tulips springing up from the ground behind the wooden crate. To cap off this engaging exploration of a setting that will be fascinating to many young children, not one, but four flaps on the final double-page spread make for a fun Easter egg hunt. Rinker's rhyming couplets scan well. The flaps are big enough for little ones still developing motor skills, with notched spaces that make them easy to lift. Ford's colored pencil and oil pastel illustrations capture the promise of a new season's--and a new day's--dawn and persevere in the style Tom Lichtenheld established in the first book of the series. A winsome board book that highlights both the work of construction crews and the work of nature. (Novelty board book. 2-5) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.