Giant Vehicles

Gr 1–4—"Larger than two blue whales, taller than five giraffes, and weighing more than 130 elephants, the world's largest passenger plane is the Airbus A380." The double-decker super-plane is among eight air, land, and water vehicles featured in this large (12" × 9") lift-the-flap board book. The others are a cargo train that stretches a mile and a half; a huge Russian-made helicopter; the American Saturn V rocket that carried three astronauts to the moon in 1969; the Caterpillar 797F dump truck; the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas; the Russian navy's submarine the Typhoon; and the Maersk Triple-E container ship. Each spreads across the double page in a realistic drawing with some cutaway views and additional small sketches among surrounding bits of labeled text describing physical and mechanical features. Four or five flaps are embedded in each scene, lifting to show some internal detail and a brief explanation. Small thumbholes set into the board page are nearly invisible among the drawing's details, so the flaps are not easy to spot on the page. Explanations are succinct and sometimes dense. Occasionally they're quite confusing, as when they claim that the "Giant Jumbo" plane's fuel—some 84,535 gallons of it—is stored in the plane's smaller rear wings, shown as sleek and flat. Though the cardboard format makes this book look like it's intended for a younger audience, the detailed explanations will appeal to older readers, while teachers or parents may enjoy explaining it to younger ones. Libraries might find it has appeal in browsing collections, and inventive teachers may find the size and weight comparisons useful.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston