If You Were a Garbage Truck or Other Big-Wheeled Worker!

Many vehicle-themed books ask readers to imagine that they’re operating the rigs. Ohanesian’s rhyming lines asks what it would be like to be the big wheeler itself—and present, through rhetorical questions, dual philosophical approaches to labor, emphasizing values of selflessness and courageousness. Surely readers wouldn’t complain “Pew-yew! Yuck! Yuck!” if they were a garbage truck being filled up with smelly trash; wouldn’t they, instead, “feel so big and proud,/ Beep your horn and shout out loud/ That you’re the town’s most trusted waste recycler?” Chou’s sunny, mural-like digital spreads show a wide range of anthropomorphized vehicles—a train, a plow, a digger, a crane, and a bus, among others—doing their work with no excuses and plenty of good cheer, alongside an array of appreciative dot-eyed humans of various skin tones and abilities. What the pages lack in socio-emotional nuance, they make up for in lightly proffered, important lessons about responsibility, resilience, and get ’er done spirit. Ages 4–8. (Feb.)