Preschool & Toddler Storytime Books on Cars & Trucks Provide Fuel for Early Learning

Grapevine Children's Librarian Leigh Burnham

One of the keys to choosing story time books is to think like a preschool child, so easy reader and picture books on cars and trucks often present their subject from a pint-size perspective.  For example, Suzanne Bloom’s The Bus for Us (2001) in both English and Spanish editions contains a little sister’s oft-repeated rhyming refrain, “Is this the bus for us, Gus?” whereupon big brother explains that it’s a taxi, fire engine, or other vehicle. Paul Strickland’s pop-up book, Truck Jam (1999), similarly catalogs all kinds of trucks that interest preschoolers. Nathan Clement’s Drive (2008) also reviews a dad’s job as a truck driver from a small boy’s point-of view—as if he is looking at the scene.  Wheels on the Racecar by Alexander Zane, with illustrations by James Warhola (2005), involves young readers in a race with a rhyming text that mirrors the lyrics in the “Wheels on the Bus” song so that the children can participate in the storytelling, making the sounds and hand movements the text suggests. When these books are grouped together, they form the basis for a story time session on cars and trucks for preschoolers.

These books, which reflect the everyday world of the three-to-five-year-old, should keep the typical preschooler’s attention span of ten minutes and a toddler’s attention span of two to three minutes if familiar songs and games break up the time between the stories, and if repetition gives young listeners much needed cues as found in Jane Cobb’s I’m a Little Teapot (1996), a collection of story time ideas that provides librarians and preschool teachers with themed rhymes and counting activities.  For example, felt board-cars complete with smiling drivers can interest children in the counting rhyme “Five speedy race cars” while an activity that teaches children to stop on red, move very slowly and carefully on yellow, and go on green keeps preschoolers entertained as it teaches them about colors and following directions.  Here elementary education majors should recall that linking units of information into manageable parts is a memory technique known as chunking. When combined with visual, auditory, and kinetic activity, it reinforces early learning.

University of North Texas Practicum Student Evelyn Smith

Of course, children’s author/illustrators also need to put these pre-reading principles into practice.  Accordingly, Grapevine, Texas, author and illustrator Janee Trasler, who occasionally helps out with story time at the Grapevine Public Library to understand her target audience better, is a treasure that Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex children’s librarians and parents can prize.  Trasler exclusively uses digital computer programs, such as Painter, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Flash, to create the colorful drawings in her books.  Her latest tale, Caveman: A B.C. Story (2011), turns the alphabet into a plot where the subject of one letter acts upon the next letter.  Incidentally, Trasler dedicated this book to Grapevine’s children’s librarian, Leigh Burnham.