An introduction to various vehicles, street signs and other transportation-related objects, this book follows a classic A-is-for-Ambulance format. By incorporating well-known words, like fire truck, with lesser-known vocabulary, like overpass, children will delight in learning their ABCs through the eyes of a young boy looking out the car window. The colorful illustrations, which show the journey of the boy, his mother and his dog through the streets of San Francisco to their rural home, flow from one page to the next.
With the theme of the book being transportation, a topic with which most children are enthralled, kids will be eager to practice their alphabet. As a simple letter book with no set story, parents and children can create their own text simply by looking at the elaborate drawings. After the child has begun to learn the vocabulary, they can then fill-in-the-blanks when the parent points to the featured object to demonstrate their knowledge. The book also offers plenty of opportunities to test a child's knowledge of colors or animals as the illustrations are highly detailed.
For kids who love anything with wheels, this is a great book to get them excited about learning their ABCs too. It's a great feeling when the child you read the story to starts to remember the letters and vocabulary. The book's everyday events also opens up communication and lets you talk to your child in a "remember when" way, such as "remember when we visited the ice cream truck last summer." When I read this story to Emily, the three-year-old that I babysit, we talk about various vocabulary while going for a drive and she loves being able to turn it into a game of looking for a stop sign or a red light.
--Abby