Dig Dig Digging
by Margaret Mayo
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Book Summary Information
Author: Margaret MayoIllustrator: Alex Ayliffe
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-05-01
ISBN: 0805068406
Number of pages: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Book Reviews of Dig Dig Digging
Book Review: 4 1/2 Dig This!
Summary: 5 Stars
"Cranes are good at lift, lift, lifting. Up go the bricks to the top of the building. Down come the pipes, very slowly, spinning. They can work all day."
"Dig, dig, digging" is a sandbox full of action scenes, played out on a large, vividly colored scene. The text sounds brawny and muscular, the machines look industrial and hard-working (but freshly painted in non-traditional colors--this might be waht Leggo@ looks like to a three-year old), and the workers are all men. I'll return to that oversight below.
It's all about nouns (vehicles and machines such as garbage trucks, dump trucks, tractors, road rollers, bulldozers, helicopters) and verbs (rolling, flattening,rumbling tumbling,gripping, pushing, whirring, zooming,whizzing, and rescuing)! Both the text and the illustrations add small but important details to the main scene, beefing up the action and realism another notch: Garbage trucks gobble, and crunch, squeezing and squashing. A tractor sends dirt flying, while in the background fields we see a somewhat alarmed bunny, a blase bird atop the tractor (and one pulling a worm from the ground), and a scarecrow obviously not scaring any birds! There's a lot of heavy moving, lifting and scraping, but talented illustrator Alex Ayliffe keeps the images clean and easy to grasp: Even the crashing rocks from a tipping dump truck don't kick up any scene-obscuring clouds of dirt.
The text is also working up a sweat, following the action by tilting upwards or down, varying in length, and especially in size ("CRASH!"). However, even the narrative takes a break, as every passage ends with the calming repetition of "They can work all day." There's one real flaw here: Despite having a female author and illustrator (Yes, Alex Ayliffe is a woman), there's nary a woman in sight. This isn't a political critique, but in these days of gender integration in even the roughest, toughest, traditionally masculine jobs, it just doesn't look right. This may be of ZERO concern to your young toddler, but kinders and older kids may notice. On the other hand, the worker's faces are so amorphous looking that gender is a bit indistinguishable; however, they resemble men much more than women. I also wish that the author had found a more creative and understandable gerund in the sentence "Transporters are good at car transporting." "Vroom, vroom, vroom," indeed, but there aren't a l ot of kids familiar with "transporting."
Despite these relatively minor objections, this is hearty winner of a book, especially with it's compact, vigorous sentences, and the imaginative colors and composition of Ms. Ayliffe. The book combines some serious muscle with a relaxing refrain, and, on the last two-page spread, we see a long shot showing the machines resting, and your young audience (after all the excitement) may emulate the big sleeping machines; now that the day is over,"they can rest all night."
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