Honk Honk! Beep Beep!

It’s that time of night when toys come alive, so a father and son from a dollhouse hop into their jaunty red jeep and head to the windowsill to watch the sunrise. The duo (who are very much in the Playmobil vein, with spherical heads, painted-on features, and fingerless hands) has no qualms about picking up hitchhikers, and the jeep is soon overstuffed with all kinds of passengers, including two improbably spotted rabbits, a farmer and his sheep, a stranded monkey motorist, a doggie road crew finished with their shift, and a herd of puffy sheep and their shepherd. Fans of Kirk’s vehicular books with Kevin Lewis (My Truck Is Stuck!; Tugga-Tugga-Tugboat) will find this solo effort very much in keeping with its predecessors. There’s a bouncy rhyme with a nifty onomatopoetic refrain (“Road crew working up ahead./ Lights are flashing, orange and red./ Traffic slows down to a creep./ ‘We’re losing time!’/HONK HONK! BEEP BEEP!”). And of course, there’s Kirk’s magical, sculptural oil renderings, which capture all the plasticine cheer of beloved playthings. Ages 2–5. (Aug.)