Three Cheers for Kid McGear!

Sherri Duskey Rinker's Three Cheers for Kid McGear is a bouncy rhyming picture book for 5 year olds about the smallest truck on a very big building site.

What happens

One day a flatbed truck rolls into the construction yard with a secret load strapped down tight. Off comes the tarp and there's a tiny, shiny new skid steer. Her name is Kid McGear, and she's got a gadget for just about everything.

She's desperate to help. The big trucks aren't so sure. She's too small, they tell her kindly, and she might get hurt. Maybe she could just stay over there?

Kid takes it on the chin. (Better than a lot of us would!) Then there's a yelp from the hillside. Excavator and Bulldozer have slipped down a steep, muddy slope and they're stuck.

This is where Kid shows what all those attachments are for. Tracks so she won't slip. A grapple hook. A power driver for the steel pipes. Giant shears for the tangled branches, sand for the slippery ground and a jackhammer for the boulder that has Bulldozer trapped. Little truck fans will love spotting each new tool as it comes out.

The rhyme bounces along, and it's great fun to read out loud. There are plenty of BEEPs and VROOMs to do in your very best truck voice.

What's it really about? Being the new one. Being the small one. Being told, very nicely, that you can't help. Plenty of five-year-olds know exactly how that feels. It's a kind book about teamwork, and it never turns the big trucks into baddies.

A few words are American (the trucks say "ok" and "you guys"), but nothing that will trip up a young listener.

For a reader who knows every digger by name, this is a treat.

What to read next

The same crew turn up in Cement Mixer's ABC, where Cement Mixer sings his way through the alphabet and Bulldozer tries (and fails) to keep a straight face.