Big Machines on the Farm; Big Machines in Town

These two useful picture books appealed to many children in my school as an early introduction to the world of machines. Cox's friendly, detailed illustrations of scenes from farm and street life show the machines in context and are full of information and touches of humour. Speech bubbles from busy firefighters or farm workers provide further information. At the end of the book a simple story reinforces the visual information in the picture spreads. There is also an index. This required some juggling around with the book as the children searched for the relevant pages but could in itself be considered a useful learning task.

One criticism from the children was that the names of all the machines were in upper case which made them slightly more difficult to read. The books were popular though, especially with the boys and clearly meet a need for more challenging reference material at the infant stage.