Red Car, Red Bus

I know Susan Steggall’s other books well, including The Life of a Car and Busy Boats, and so I am familiar with her carefully worked out approach to illustration. Her distinctive artwork for Red Car, Red Bus is made using torn pieces of textured paper so that the road on which the vehicles move and the landscapes are brought sharply to life. The written text simply names the vehicles and their colours and the narrative is suggested through the pictures and can be created by child and sharing adult.  There is so much to talk about here – colours and numbers of course, but also the journeys the vehicles make, what is being transported in the lorries and vans and the people and objects they pass. There is a man high up on a ladder painting the outside of a house and a woman leaning out of her window to see if it is raining. It is! And so we now see the clouds have darkened and umbrellas are up.

This book is a good one for an adult to share with a child, savouring the pictures together, but it is large and robust enough for showing and chatting about to a nursery group. They will love the story running through the book about the little boy who drops his bear and cannot get his busy rushing Mummy to see what has happened. It is this kind of detail which is likely to appeal and make the book a favourite.