Let's face it, trucks are fun! Toy trucks are fun to play with and make noises for, and real trucks are fun to see how big they are and to watch them work. The pages of I Love Trucks are filled with bright contrasting colors against simple backgrounds; the focus is clearly on the different types of trucks. Readers are shown all the different jobs trucks can do, from towing, hauling, sweeping, digging, dumping, mixing concrete, and more! Each page has a single sentence describing the truck pictured below. With repetition of the word 'truck', your child will quickly learn to identify it and can then 'read' half of the book already. This is very encouraging to keep them sounding out the words and asking questions until they can read many or all of the pages.
When reading this to your little one, the more expression and excitement you use, the more fun it is for them. The narrator is talking about his passion - trucks! - so feel free to get as excited as you can about each type of truck described, especially the ice cream truck toward the end! As the narrator names all the types of truck he likes, encourage your child to join in and name their own favorite trucks as well. Perhaps they love some trucks not included, like monster trucks or daddy's truck! This is a good book to learn to read because of the repetition and short, simple sentences. As your child grows and progresses, you can continue challenging them and keep the book interesting by studying together the facts about different kinds of trucks on the inside cover page. Do they know how much a garbage trucks weighs, or that a street sweeper runs on batteries? Don't be surprised when your child memorizes some of these facts about trucks and impresses people by repeating them.
I started reading I Love Trucks to my niece, Emily, when she was three. She loved to point at the pictures and say "tucks". Her favorite was always the dump truck because she had a toy dump truck to associate it with. Now that she is four, Emily have started reading the extra facts about the trucks, and she's decided her new favorite is the cherry picker because it grows tall like her. Emily is very proud that she is one of the tallest girls in her preschool class.
--Audra