Wonderful picture book for babies through grade 1 with rhyming text and rhythm that doesn’t feel forced and appealing illustrations with animals operating a variety of digging machines such as bulldozers, excavators, loaders and backhoes. Author Tony Mitton also incorporates plenty of alliteration and onomatopoeic words that will have littles making big noises while learning about big machines. Mitton also uses higher level vocabulary such as shunt, gouge and hoist that are easy to understand with plenty of textual hints and pictorial clues. Sadly, with all the excellent vocabulary and even a page with pictures of the machines’ parts with actual names included, Mitton does not include of the names of those diggers even when it would have been easy to print them right next to their illustrations.
Highly recommended for home, school and public libraries!