This rhyming picture book contains lots of fun onomatopoeia as it describes the stages of constructing a building, which is eventually revealed to be a library. Construction might be easy to assume that it is skewed towards boys, with its trucks and tools, but my 3½ year old daughter loved it, especially when trying to guess what they were building. Her exclamation of glee when the library was revealed just after she’d guessed correctly on the previous page was enough to convince me of the merits of this book.
“Build the frame. Build the frame. Hammer all day long. Make the stairs and floors and walls. Bing! Bang! Bong!”
There is a fantastic picture glossary in the back for parents like me that had know idea that there were different types of cranes. Each picture is accompanied with a description about the machine and what it does. My daughter and I also played a fun game where we had to go back through the book to find each of the pictures in the glossary (like in Where’s Wally books) which was a great chance to read it through a few more times.
The picture book is a follow up from Sally Sutton & Brian Lovelock’s Demolition, which follows a similar structure to Construction, with the same rhyming & onomatopoeia style, with a big reveal at the end. The New Zealand pair make a wonderful author/illustrator team, with the colourful and detailed pictures and bold writing (particularly the onomatopoeia sounds) matching up well.
Sally Sutton & Brian Lovelock’s Construction is a fun, educational way to discover different machines, and the process of constructing a building. Ideal for ages 3+.
TITLE: Construction
AUTHOR(S): Sally Sutton
ILLUSTRATOR: Brian Lovelock
PUBLISHER: Walker Books
RRP: $29.99