Total Tractor!

Gr 4–8—The colorful cover and full-color photographs of this well-designed volume will grab the attention of machinery-loving browsers, though a few flaws mar this title. The book is divided into three chapters ("Powerful Machines," "On the Farm," "Beyond the Fields"), with spreads devoted to different subtopics. The book boasts a clean design, with photos superimposed on white backgrounds. Many spreads feature a large photograph, while a box that resembles a metal plate provides a silhouetted scale model image of the featured tractor and its height and length in standard and metric dimensions. Additional information includes brand name, country of origin, builder, date of first production, weight, and horsepower. Arrows indicate specific parts, while brief text explains the tractor's intended purpose. Other spreads contain several small photographs, accompanied by a sentence of description and the tractor's name, manufacturer, and date. A credit to the design of this volume is that virtually all the photos display the brand name on each vehicle. However, the use of European vocabulary may be confusing, and readers may erroneously assume that the European implements such as seed drills, ridgers, and plows mentioned here are used in this country.