As the sun sets behind the big construction site, all the hardworking trucks get ready to say goodnight.
One by one, Crane Truck, Cement Mixer, Dump Truck, Bulldozer, and Excavator finish their work and lie down to rest—so they'll be ready for another day of rough and tough construction play!
Even the roughest, toughest readers will want to turn off their engines, rest their wheels, and drift to sleep with this sweet and soothing story. Vibrant illustrations and gentle rhyming text make this construction book for kids a surefire bedtime favorite.
Sherri has returned to her passion of writing to indulge her own children's passions. A graphic designer, she lives in Chicago with her photographer husband, a cockapoo named Quincy, several fish, a few hermit crabs, an ever-changing array of insects in jars, toys in every corner, and two energetic and inquisitive young boys: one fascinated by bugs and magic and another obsessed with trucks and trains. She's constantly inspired -- and often exhausted! She created GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, CONSTRUCTION SITE in hopes of happier bedtimes and sweet dreams for all.
This is Sherri's first book, and (just in case you think it can't happen!) it was picked from the slush pile.
My kid goes running through the park today, what is he running for, is it a squirrel or a soccer ball, no, he saw a garbage truck. Then he just stood there, next to it, grinning happily. It was parked in the park because the two dudes in it were getting high. They waved cheerfully to my kid, my kid waved ecstatically back. I stood there awkwardly. Garbage dudes are not nice to you but they are nice as shit to little kids. A lot of people are like that.
Different truck, obviously, I'm not gonna narc those garbage dudes out.
Point is I can't tell you how many times I've read this fucking book. Here's what it's about, it's about trucks that go to sleep. Let's rate the trucks.
Crane Truck: Crane Truck hangs a nightlight from his crane before he goes to sleep, that's pretty cute. He has a teddy bear. Four stars.
Cement Truck He gets a bath? That's not that exciting. That's not even a cement mixer-specific thing. Lame. My wife says: "I don't like his face." Two stars.
Dump Truck It's clever how his Z's get incorporated into the building. Three stars.
Bulldozer This one is my favorite, look, he made a dirt pillow. He's taking a dirt nap. Five stars.
Excavator "Excavator" is my kid's favorite word, but this guy isn't doing anything. Bulldozer made a whole pillow, and Excavator's just...what is that, two piles? I think it sucks. My wife disagrees. She says he looks "cozy." "But that's just dirt," I argue. "Cozy," she replies firmly. Three stars.
My kid likes trucks, is what I'm saying. Trucks are heavily anthropomorphized creatures around here. You do what you gotta do. No more huffing and puffing, team; it's time to rest your heads and dream.
My husband is a construction engineer and he is away from home many times. Sometimes he is even away for days. Thus, naturally my little boy appreciates anything that reminds him his dad and his dad's work. This book is the perfect bedtime story. Of course we own a copy of the book and it has a nice place at our selves.
Read this with my 4 year old nephew tonight. He and his brother love trucks and played in their sandbox all summer with their own set of trucks. It was just so cute to read this book to him at bedtime.
All the trucks are finished their work for the day and have to get their sleep. The rhymes flow nicely and my nephew and I laughed quite a bit. A delightful read!
This is such a cute idea, and a great alternative to bedtime stories featuring animals as many children love big construction trucks. I mean, they are pretty darn cool ;-> And it's fun imagining them dozing off to sleep after a long day helping to build structures.
But, ultimately, I wasn't super wowed. Maybe all the hype just set me up to be a little disappointed. The rhyming text was just okay for me, and though I liked the illustrations alright I didn't find most of them as endearing as the one on the cover. Also, it might have been nice for one of the trucks to be a "she" since some little girls do like construction trucks! Too, I found the switching back-and-forth between daytime and nighttime a bit odd pacing as we move through each truck, first showing the work it does, then showing it ready for bed. Maybe I'm just being picky.
I know I'm being picky in calling out the incorrect use of the term "cement mixer" for the truck in the book (and I did not deduct any stars for this), but please allow this daughter of a contractor and home builder her say and give your children the correct terms instead.
First of all, a "cement mixer" (concrete mixer) is a piece of equipment used to mix concrete. It looks like this:
What is called a Cement Mixer in this book is actually a Concrete Truck, they often look like this:
In the industry, these are also known as "bulkers" (that is the large, round mixing part). One may call them concrete trucks, but please do not call them cement trucks and certainly not cement mixers.
As one construction company spells out online: "CEMENT is one of the basic ingredients used to make CONCRETE … just as FLOUR is one of the basic ingredients used to make CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. No one calls flour "chocolate chip cookies" … and no one calls chocolate chip cookies 'flour' (or thinks the words should be used interchangeably). When cement is mixed with water and other basic ingredients – sand, and gravel or crushed stone, – it forms a paste that glues these basic ingredients into a rock-like mass, which is known as concrete." They continue on with many more details on the proper usage (http://www.schmitzmix.com/press/press...)
As you can see, misuse of the term is a sore spot for construction professionals ;-)
Forgive my little tangent, but I really do feel children deserve to know the proper terminology, especially if they are truly interested in construction sites and equipment. Of course, I can't blame the author for using the incorrect terms when it is so prevalent in most of society (she probably had no idea), but I do wish there had been some sort of fact-checker on a book that is specifically about construction trucks.
Ah well, for those little ones who love nothing better than to mix their own mud-and-pebbles concrete in the backyard, this will probably be a winner of a bedtime story.
Pretty good. It was easy to read for my six year old and that’s all I truly require when I find kids books. It was easy enough to sound out most words that weren’t sight words.
My son, reinforcing gender stereotypes everywhere, loves construction equipment. This book was obviously going to be a hit. One by one each piece of construction equipment finishes its work and gets tucked in for bed. Crane Truck cuddles up with his teddy bear after raising one last beam, Cement Mixer gets a bath before getting under his blanket, and on my son's favorite page, Dump Truck is yelled at for his loud snoring.
I don't much care for the text in the book; it doesn't really trip off the tongue but I do appreciate the vocabulary lesson (did you know that cranes have "booms?" Me neither). I also like the context it has given me for when we pass construction sites that are not active. I can tell my son they've all gone to bed, and he'll happily accept that answer where before he thought I was lying and scheming to keep moving construction equipment, and therefore all joy, out of his life.
The illustrations are great. Thumbs up.
Even though the book is a big hit in my house, it's losing two full stars for the complete absence of the female gender. This is more irritating because the author is a woman. Really, you found you couldn't have made ONE of these machines a girl?
**Good thing my son loves it because we will own it as soon as I can overcome my shame and confess to the library that he ripped a page out in his enthusiasm.**
Popular fun bedtime book with rhymed verse and anthropomorphic construction equipment. Especially great, I would think, for kids whose parents work in the building industry -- although of course in this book the equipment runs itself with no operators -- and maybe that could happen someday, but let's not overthink this and get the kiddos worrying about mom and dad's livelihood ...
I do wonder whether any of these "truck books" ever include a backhoe, grader, or loader. They tend to go for the bigger, more dramatic equipment.
This was in our most recent library book bundle about trucks and construction (might as well start enforcing those gender stereotypes early, right?). I loved it so much that I have renewed it twice now and am thinking I just need to buy my son his own copy. What do I love about it? First of all, the illustrations are so endearing! The Cement Mixer with his blankie and the Crane Truck with his stuffed animal and night light just make my heart melt every time I look at them. The images are simultaneously soothing and pleasantly colorful. For me the rhyming text flows freely, and there are appealing sound effect and repetitive elements for little listeners to enjoy. I even made up my own rhyming verse for my little boy, which I tuck in at the end of the read as I'm snuggling him into his crib: "You've had such fun, you've played all day. It's time for bed, Sebastian J. Shh...goodnight, Sebastian, goodnight." He gets a big grin on his face every single time. I can't wait until he's old enough to understand the humor in the pictures.
ETA August 2015: My baby girl enjoys the rhymes in this book, and my three-year-old is now thoroughly obsessed. We have read this A LOT lately! This book is a new favorite at our house, for sure.
Fun read aloud. My three year old really enjoys it. I do wonder why Rinker made all of the vehicles masculine. How difficult is it to use "she" for half of them? No pink required; I promise.
I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH. I read every night before I fall asleep. I like listening to everyone read it to me. Come visit me so I can listen to the story again.
Tom Lichtenheld is one of my favorite illustrators. I discovered his work—how was I missing it??—in the wonderful Chris Barton picture book, Shark Vs. Train, that you’ve heard me rave about so many times before. Tom’s bold, energetic style crackles with humor and appeal. My kids are all drawn to his work; his illustrations are the kind you pore over, giggling at the details.
I went on a binge last week and ordered all the Lichtenheld our library system could muster. (The entire second row pictured in this link is sitting on my bed right this minute.) The resulting reading pile is a Rillabooks post-in-progress, but I could not resist interrupting myself to write about one particular book from that pile, the one that has completely enchanted my two-year-old son.
Huck’s a truck kid, through and through. Trucks, cars, and trains. Preferably half-buried in dirt. He has staked a claim on a corner of my veggie garden: it’s where the trucks grow. When I saw that Tom Lichtenheld is the illustrator of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker, I knew I’d pretty much found Huck’s dream book.
I underestimated. He is CRAZY about this book, carries it everywhere, begs for it a dozen times a day or more. It’s his Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel (you Ramona fans know what I mean), but I’m not in a Beezus place yet because when I read it to him, he is SO. DARN. CUTE.
It’s a bedtime book set in a construction site. Are you thinking: that’s brilliant? Because the moment I saw it, I thought, that’s brilliant. Five big rough, tough construction vehicles finish their day’s work and get ready for bed, one by one. I wish I could show you every page of the art. If you click on the title above, you can view some images from the book. There’s a book trailer there, too, which HUCK MUST NOT SEE or I’ll never pry him away from the computer ever again.
Besides, I’m greedy for the cuddles this book gets me. My busy boy climbs into my lap and more or less acts out the book—raising an arm high when the crane truck lifts one last beam, whirling his hands when the cement mixer mixes a final load—and when the excavator snuggles into its dirt bed, Huck hugs me tight: “Now we ’nuggle, Mommy.” Ridiculously cute, right?
The best part is right in the middle when the dump truck appears. “Dat me!” he says every time.
I love anthropomorphism. Most of my favorite children's books have talking animals with cheeky personalities but joining the ranks of my favorite animal characters are these busy trucks who let out a yawn and cuddle with teddy bears at the end of the day. Yes, if I didn't have a busy-all-things-construction-site toddler boy, this may not rank as high as the others but the illustrations are wonderful and descriptive and rhyming text. My son loves that he can predict what's coming up and that we can put each truck to bed as the repeated "Good night dump truck (excavator, cement mixer, etc), good night ends the description of each trucks job. I highly recommend this book to all truck-loving kids.
I bought this for my two girls, who LOVE construction equipment. Sadly, every single piece of equipment is 'He'. Why, why does it have to be gendered? I wish I'd checked the reviews first. I won't be keeping it.
The rest of it is fine (the rhyming is a little forced but the pictures of the equipment tucked up with a teddy or a quilt are cute) but I just hate that reinforcement that there are certain things for boys and certain things for girls, I wish society gave children longer to not be entirely defined by their gender.
Don't tell anybody but... I read this at work because it was lying right in front of me... and I'm also supposed to sell this to people. I wanted to know what I'm selling to them. So, don't judge me. It's a cute book with some neat illustrations. Definitely worth picking up for those little ones that love machinery and are interested in learning what different types of vehicles can do. I wish it was less gender-biased. It seems to be clearly geared towards boys, which makes me sad but doesn't surprise me at all.
My daughter adores this book. We’ve read it so many times already and I’ve bought three or four copies of it because she keeps giving it to her friends. Fun illustrations and story.
An instant favorite around here! Aunt Bethany is the best! We read this at least five times in the first few days, and he still hasn’t had his fill. An adorable story about construction vehicles turning in for the night, naming all the vehicles and the jobs they do at the site.
My son turned five about two weeks ago. He got a "Big Dig" from my husband's parents. He sits on the seat and he can dig holes in the sandbox with the big, construction-like shovel. All that is great, except he doesn't have a sandbox. I set him to work on the weeds in the garden -- with rather disastrous results.
A few days after his birthday, my son received this book from a friend of mine. He recognized the "Big Dig" right away, and immediately told me a story about a shovel and the moon and the stars. The story is great. The text is good, especially since it is a debut book -- the rhyming scheme goes off occasionally, but not irretrievably. The illustrations, however, are phenomenal.
The illustrations have a wonderful retro feel; they are soft, but bright and friendly, and with a healthy dose of humor. In all, my favorite kind of illustrations.
Received as a present for my oldest son at around nine months. He pointed to the excavator and said "Eggege!" Love at first sight.
Stunningly beautiful illustrations, with all sorts of adorable little touches. The crane truck's teddy bear, the blanket on the top of the cement mixer, etc. At first I was less of a fan of the text -- the poetry is a bit clunky, but after many, many re-reads I am more appreciative. Plus there's a lot of actual content packed in - I learned some things myself. Handy, as trucks became the dominant conversation topic for the next few years.
The rest of the kids weren't as truck-obsessed, but it's remained a popular bedtime book.
When your child is fixated by any manner of construction equipment or large truck, this book is the best. As the construction site shuts down for the day, so do the machines doing the dirty work--they all go to sleep. Each one has it's own personality, which is adorable. And the rhyming, while at times expected and repetitive, mostly feels fresh and fun. It's well written and the illustrations are perfect.
According to the New York Times Book Review podcast, this book was in a slush pile on someone's desk until an editorial assistant pulled it out of the pile. It has been on the NYT best seller's list for children's books for more than 2 years. It's an easily read book in iambic pentameter rhyme. Wonderful illustrations, too.
My biggest problem with this book is "WHY DO ALL THE TRUCKS USE HE/HIM PRONOUNS?" Seriously, doesn't Rinker know that children of ALL genders may love construction and read this book? I find it really aggravating. Also, the illustrations aren't my style but they aren't bad either. I do have this book in my classroom and read it regularly but I try to change the pronouns.
An informative and fun book for the young construction lover in your life. This well-rhymed story was just as enjoyable for me to read to my preschooler as it was for him to listen to it. Highly recommended.