A Hole in the Road

There is a problem on the road. A hole has appeared and this stops the traffic from moving freely. This energetic picture book introduces children to the steps needed to repair the road and shows them the machines and people who make this possible. The landscape format takes the eye across the double spreads giving a splendid sense of the scale of the road and the machines; sometimes a long machine fills the whole of a double spread. The first stage is to do with breaking up the old surface; children are introduced to a backhoe loader, a mini-excavator which enlarges the hole and then a digger which scoops up the rubble to be taken away in a dump truck. Next – in comes the tipper trucker bringing crushed stones to fill the hole and finally the road is made smooth enough to be used again.

There are quite a few books on this topic as young children are very much taken with things that lift, press and pull and which they sometimes see in the streets near where they live. This one competes well; the drawings are big enough to discuss how each machine is adapted for its task whether it is pulling, drilling or spreading. It is a good introduction to procedural text and the pictures provide huge potential for talk and questions.