Diggers, Dozers, and Dumpers: Small Stories About Big Machines
by Ole Könnecke; illus. by the author; trans. from German by Melody Shaw
Primary    Gecko    32 pp.
5/25    9798765667552    $18.99

Wry humor is the fuel that makes these big machines go. Emily Sheep, a sculptor, uses a wheel loader to position a giant chunk of stone; forester Sven-Erik Moose uses a tree harvester to cull some ailing trees (he’d much rather be planting); Amanda Crocodile smooths out a bumpy road with a bulldozer, making her daily bike rides to work easy going. Each of these vignettes plays out over one or two double-page spreads with discrete blocks of text economically describing the scene, developing character, and delivering a fact or two about the digger, dozer, or dumper in question. Line and color cartoons pay due homage to the massiveness of most of these machines even when they tip into the absurd as when Quentin Crane uses a cherry picker to prune a tiny seedling or a rhinoceros baker whips up a batch of pancake batter in a cement mixer (ingredients: 2,692 liters of milk, 2.692 tons of flour, and 32,304 eggs). Things-that-go books crowd the shelves, but few offer as many giggles, snorts, and laughs as this one.

From the July/August 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.