Meet Jack Truck! (Jon Scieszka's Trucktown Series)

by Hunter McKown, David Shannon (Illustrator), Loren Long (Illustrator), David Gordon (Illustrator)

Overview

Come along another adventure in Jon Scieszka's Trucktown! Meet Jack Truck—a four-year-old flatbed, 10-wheeler truck who loves racing, joking, smashing, and crashing throughout Trucktown!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416941736
Publisher:	Little Simon
Publication date:	06/03/2008
Series:	Jon Scieszka's Trucktown Series
Pages:	14
Product dimensions:	8.44(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.37(d)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

David Shannon has written and illustrated numerous award winning picture books including Duck on a Bike, the Caldecott Honor Book No David!, How I Learned to be a Pirate, and Good Boy Fergus. He is also one of the collaborative illustrators in Jon Scieszka’s Trucktown series. David lives with his wife and his daughter in Los Angeles.

Loren Long illustrated President Barack Obama’s Of Thee I Sing; the newest version of The Little Engine that Could; Madonna’s second picture book, Mr. Peabody’s Apples; Nightsong by Ari Berk; and the Barnstormers series. He also illustrated Frank McCourt’s Angela and the Baby Jesus and is part of the Design Garage for Jon Scieszka’s Trucktown series. Loren’s work has appeared in Time, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. He lives with his wife and two sons in Westchester, Ohio. Visit him at LorenLong.com.

David Gordon has done visual development for numerous production companies from Lucasfilm to Pixar, including Toy Story; Monsters, Inc.; A Bug’s Life; Cars; BlueSky’s Robots; and Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants. He’s also written and illustrated several picture books, among them Hansel and Diesel, The Three Little Rigs, The Ugly Truckling, and Smitten. He’s one of the illustrators of Jon Scieszka’s fifty-two-book, New York Times bestselling series, Trucktown. Visit him at IllustratorRanch.com.

Editorial Reviews

Personified trucks fill the pages of this board book. Jack Truck is a thrill seeker and his best friend Dump Truck Dan seems to enjoy the same kinds of challenges. Dan's brother is Payloader Pete and this group likes to play jokes on each other, often with a not so nice outcome. Jack loves falling rocks, but Cement Mixer Melvin is just the opposite—falling rocks make him nervous. Some trucks like to imitate Evil Kneivel and enjoy jumping over a pile of bathtubs and toilets (a little potty humor for the boys). The only females are Garbage Truck Gabriella and Grader Kat. Talk about stereotyping—Gabriella is characterized as a truck who never stops talking and Kat makes tire tread art in the sand. On the other hand, Jack dreams about knocking stuff down. It really is a book designed to appeal to boys, but is Jack a really good role model? And the story line which is practically nonexistent is not what one would expect in a book carrying the name of Scieszka—the literacy ambassador. Part of the "Jon Scieszka Trucktown" series. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot