Supertruck. So simple, so clever, so appealing both visually and thematically. And such a book for the very, very young. It will need all its superpowers to compete on the Caldecott table, against books with more elaborate and sophisticated art. But some of my favorite picture books of 2015 are for the youngest readers, including this one.

Let's start with the title page. Note the muted palette and clean, minimalist, shapes-dominated design. The stillness. That suspended twilight feeling. Its symmetry is soothing and lulling — just the right background to focus the eye on the two arresting white dots lurking inside the darkened garage that signal to the viewer that something really intriguing is coming.

The page turn brings a surprise: bright and cheerful primary and secondary colors. Savage was so smart to choose just three Crayola-clean colors for the "brave" and powerful trucks. On the next cityscape spread, full of anonymous and colorless vehicles, it makes those trucks  — blue, red, and green — stand out easily for young viewers.

Savage efficiently establishes their dominance and machismo over the next three double-page spreads — and then, finally, we meet our hero, the lowly garbage truck. In contrast to the three confident trucks, his expression is bemused and self-deprecating, and he is colorless. I guess you would say he is white, but mostly he is the absence of color, which allows Savage to shade him variously, depending on the color of the page the truck is occupying, or the relative darkness of the night, or the intensity of the blizzard.

Speaking of the blizzard, the adventure then begins, simply and clearly: "One evening, it starts snowing." Over the next several spreads Savage manages to both progress his secret-superhero story and capture the exact feel of a snowstorm at night. (Check out, especially, the spread on which the background is an unusual gray-green that nonetheless works perfectly to capture a heavy snowfall.) After Supertruck has saved the city (and the three stranded, and now quite a bit less arrogant, trucks) and gone back to his mild-mannered garbage-truck persona, the differences in facial expressions are subtle but significant: the three colorful trucks look much humbler, while Supertruck is now the one sporting the confident grin. Savage creates those expressions with the simplest of lines, but they are unmistakable, and they make the ending very satisfying.

As I said above, quite a few excellent 2015 contenders (more to be covered by this blog in the coming weeks) are for the youngest readers/viewers. I hope the Caldecott committee will keep this simple, super picture book in mind.

Your thoughts?