This month's topic: Trucks! Our almost-two-year-old is fortunate to have two older male cousins who have passed down a plethora of books about trucks. That coupled with the fact that my first child is a girl, so when our son was born, we received many "boy-centric" gifts such as books about trucks. And finally, as I have written about before here, our son loves trucks and often chooses these books off the shelf.
So let's starts with my first truck board book (the book's lack of capitals, not my own). This one is pretty straightforward - each page is desginated to a certain type of truck: Giant carriers, fire truck, loaders and lifters, to name a few and each includes four or five labled examples. I think it's best to view this one through a post-structuralist lens. What does plot matter anyway? We don't need characters, conflict, and setting to pull us down, right? All we need are these large, classified images to compel us to keep turning the page. If your child is not old enough to understand such absurd notions as "once upon a time" or "The End," this one is for you.
Next let's look at Trucks by Byron Barton, mostly definitely a Marxist text. On this surface, this one is seemingly about the various jobs that trucks and truckers perform throughout the day: "Here comes the bread truck with bread for the store." and "This is a tank truck delivering oil." But underneath, we know what Barton is really revealing how important these working class jobs are for our people to function as a society. We cannot live without food, water, oil. The last line of the book says it all: "Trucks on the road. They work hard."
And that brings us to Where Do Diggers Sleep at Ngiht? You know where I'm doing with this one, right? Let's start with the cover: A seemingly female digger smiles sleepighsly behind the uber-male larger digger. The text goes on to explore how and where different types of trucks go to sleep. "Where do snowplows sleep at night when they've cleared the snow away? Do their moms say, 'Get to sleep, boys-lots more snow is on its way'?" Why should we assume that snowplows are boys? Why can't girls be snowplows? What kind of message is this line sending to the little girls listening to this story?
Let's take a structurarlist look at Tons of Trucks by Sue Fliess and Betsy Snyder. Disclaimer: this -one is also a lift-the-flap book, aligning itself with such categories that aim to entice young readers with its interactive pages. The only rhyming that exists within these pages is the repetitive word "truck" that ends each page. "Blast trucks, Mud trucks, Honk! Go fast, trucks!" The text assumes that the reader is amped up, already excited about what trucks can do. People are replaced by animals: dogs drive dump trucks; a squirell navigates a street-cleaner. As readers, we are asked to suspend our disbelief in the midst of our excitement for this exciting topic!
Finally, let's end with Usborne Big Machine: TRUCKS. I've written about this one before. Earlier, I wrote that I craved a plot in this informative, almost brochure-like book. Now, I reconsider through a psychoanalytical lens. Consider two of the main characters: blue and green truck. Green truck is carrying a box of bananas. The phallic image is so crudely depicted three different ways on the truck. We are asked if we can see where the driver sits in the dump truck, and while we can, we do not see driver. Is Driver too asshamed to show his or her face? Is Driver overcompensating with "wheels that are twice as high as a tall person"?
Okay, that's enough...Ahh that was fun, but please read all the aforementioned as tongue-in-cheek:)
Next month's topic: Going-to-sleep books. That should be fun!
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