The Tractor Squad - Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF

First off, the winner of the Barnaby Unboxed! Signed Copy Giveaway is:

🎈🎉Beth Gallagher 🎉🎈

Congratulations, Beth!

Now, on to this week's #PPBF review. Interestingly, this picture book is a combination of two stories. The first is a look at a "tractor's life" on a farm in the winter. And the second story set in the spring, plays with a tractor version of the Ten Little Monkeys. This is a wonderfully humorous, rhyming picture book about tractors on a farm.

Book cover - five tractors roaring toward the reader, with two chickens fluing alongside and a pig racing them in front of them.

The Tractor Squad

Author: Heather Dawn Torres

Illustrator: Gary Laib

Publisher: Marble Press (2024)

Ages: 3-8

Fiction

Themes:

Tractors, farm life, friends, farm animals, rhyming, and humor.

Synopsis:

For the many, many vehicle-obsessed kids out there. Two complete stories for reading aloud!

"Where do tractors go when it turns cold and snows?" Do they make cozy beds in their giant red sheds? In this bright and bouncy read-aloud, tractors dig and scoop, round up the sheep and feed the chickens . . . all before they chug and stomp, zig and zag — dancing with their farmyard friends. Then, in a second story inspired by Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed, count down from ten with Field Mouse, Farmer, and a colorful cast of hard-working tractors. Oversized trim with bright candy-colored art and a full 40 pages long,

The Tractor Squad will have vehicle-obsessed kids bouncing along to the playful rhythms and rhymes. For kids who love Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site and Little Blue Truck.

Opening Lines:

Where do tractors go

when it turns cold and snows?

Do they make cozy beds

in their giant red sheds?

Do they sneak to the lake

with their skates and playmates?

Do they climb up a tree

and ski down with a…

WHEEEEE?

What I LIKED about this book:

This important opening question, asked in a fun, lilting rhyme, about where tractors go when it snows is accompanied by a hysterical opening spread. Pigs and chickens wearing ice skates and a tractor with skis! "WHEEEE," indeed!

Internal spread - three tractors slipping & skiing down a slope to the frozen pond where a pig and chicken ice skate.

Text © Heather Dawn Torres, 2024. Image © Gary Laib. 2024.

Heather Dawn Torres' stated intention to highlight the reality of farm life, while making a funny book about personified tractors is evident in the next spread where the farmer and his family still have work to do, whether it is winter or not. Though even here, Gary Laib had a great bit of fun with the tractors' expressions and even added training wheels to the smallest tractor.

Internal spread - on the left farmer on a large red tractor. On the right a mother on a medium green tractor and a child on a small yellow tractor with training wheels. All riding through snowy fields.

Text © Heather Dawn Torres, 2024. Image © Gary Laib. 2024.

In fact, instead of resting about the fire or kicking off their wheels and having a good read, tractors have to round up the sheep and feed the chickens. The rhyming couplets continue with this playful question - answer look at farm life, while Gary Laib's colorful, energetic, and humorous illustrations will delight the kid in all of us.

Internal Spread - in upper left a tractor doing flashcards with a chicken, lower left a tractor kicked off his tires to read a book by the fire, and on the right a tractor throwing seed to the chickens gathered about it.

Text © Heather Dawn Torres, 2024. Image © Gary Laib. 2024.

But. . . once the work is done, the tractors and their barnyard friends clear snow from an enclosure and with a chug and a scoop and a wiggle and a giggle, they "Zig and zag, then zag and zig. We call this the tractor jig!" All the farm animals and tractors join in the jig and kids will have fun mimicking the action,

The arrival of spring and the announcement on a sign "Ten Busy Tractors," signals the shift in content and rhyming scheme and the start of the count down with ten tractors "plowing through the field." As they each have a mishap, the field mouse (instead of Mama) calls the farmer (instead of the doctor), and the farmer says, “Get that broken tractor back to the shed." Further exploring life on a farm, the tractors plow, "lift loads of hay," plant seeds, haul the crops, weed, and cut hay. Unfortunately, one by one the tractors get sent back to the shed. While the illustrations honestly capture farm life in the background, Gary Laib has lots of fun showing up the injured or embarrassed tractor and the mouse foreman.

Internal spread - six tractors working in the fields in the background and one tractor with an engine sprain sadly looking at the field mouse who is calling the farmer.

Seven busy tractors hauling wheat and grain:

one pulled too hard and

felt his engine strain.

Field mouse phoned the farmer

and the farmer said,

“Get that injured tractor

back to the shed."

A surprise ending harkens back to the book's opening and is very sweet. Tractor crazy kids are going to have SO much fun with this book. As will kids you love to participate with established call refrains. The traditional and digital watercolor illustrations are so lively, humorous, and packed with little farm treasures (like a mother duck leading a line of ducklings, with one on her head). It's great for an active story time, designed to "get the wiggles out." A playful, rhyming picture book on the farm life of tractors.

Resources:

Photo collage of - upper left toliet paper tractor craft, upper right is a origami tractor, lower left is a Styrofoam and cardbord tractor, and lower right is tractor made of recycled items.

make a toilet roll tractor, an origami tractor (with an adult), a Styrofoam and cardboard tractor, or a recycled materials tractor.

Photo collage on a toilet paper mouse craft on the left and farm animal toilet paper craft on the right.

make your own field mouse and farm animals to help your tractors.

write or draw story of your tractor's adventures or their favorite things to do.

If you missed my interview with Heather Dawn Torres and Gary Laib on Monday, find it (here).

This post is part of a series by authors and KidLit bloggers called Perfect Picture Book Fridays. For more picture book suggestions and resources see Susanna Leonard Hill's Perfect Picture Books.