Trucks and Diggers

Let's Look: Trucks and Diggers: Essential Preschool Learning
(Dorling Kindersley)
by Hannah Wilson
nonfiction board book
ages 1-4

This DK book features bright photography and fairly technical language for a board book. When I say it uses technical language what I mean is that the correct terms are used for each of the construction equipment that is pictured and the parts of the equipment are identified. The Thomas the Tank Engine series is for little kids but it uses complicated train jargon. The same with this book. I don't know exactly what a harvester or scraper or grader does and I don't know the difference between kinds of fire trucks, but if I paid attention and read a number of these nonfiction books about vehicles I could learn.
At about 36 pages this is thicker than the average board book as well, but priced the same as a thinner book ($5.99).
Trucks and Diggers shows trucks, miscellaneous vehicles for hauling, emergency vehicles, plows, trailers, construction equipment, and more. There are quizzes so the child can identify what is on a page ("I spy") and at the end there is a match-the-shape-to-the-vehicle game that was more challenging than I expected. (Is that the shape of the space shuttle)?
For kids who love things that move and wheels that go around, this is a good starter book. It would make a good birthday present paired with a Tonka truck or other toy.
DK (Dorling Kindersley) and Usborne books are among my favorite books for children with the way they feature excellent photography and easy to read fonts.

Digger, Digger

Digger, Digger
by
David Bedford & Christina Miesen
Board Book ages 18 months - 5 years

This simple, colorful, nonfiction book shows which equipment is appropriate for certain construction jobs.
This is an Australian book so they use words like "lorry" and "headlamps". The equipment is not particularly anthropomorphic, but the vehicles do have eyes and smiles.
In the front cover I see that one of the National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication entries is "polarity-juvenile literature". I had to think about this one for a while. There are some "use this machine not that machine" discussions in the book, so they must mean that there are some opposites, but I would not say that this is a book about opposites.

For those who love Bob the Builder, Handy Manny, John Deere, etc. this is another one for your library.