Emergency Vehicles

Reviewed by: Shannon Schinagl - Maine State Library, Augusta, Central Maine Library District

Review Date: December 8, 2015

Review

As is obvious, this non-fiction book is about emergency vehicles. The biggest difficulty for libraries -- school or public -- is getting this book into the hand of the correct child.

The information is incredibly detailed, which one would not guess from looking at the cover of the book. In order to read the information, a child would need to have good reading skills and high-level vocabulary. However, if the right child gets his/her hands on this book, s/he will soak up the in-depth information. In addition to the information on the pages, each emergency vehicle has multiple lift-the-flaps with even more information inside. Finally, this book goes beyond the typical emergency vehicles. After years of helping children find books about various "things that go," there were several vehicles in this title that I had never heard of.

While there is nothing particularly special about the illustrations, they are astoundingly detailed, which matches the high level of information. However, the diversity of the people depicted was disappointing. While there are a few token women, there is not a single person of color among what must be close to 80 people illustrated in the book. In this case, there is no reason for this lack of diversity.

While the flaps are well made out of heavy cardboard, if any are torn out or fall out after heavy use, the information will be gone. The information about the inner workings of each vehicle is written on the flap itself.

If this book is recommended one-on-one by the librarian, or if the right child finds it, this book will be a hit. However, because the outer shell doesn't give any indication of the level of detail on the inside, most kids who would love this book may not pick it up.

Overall Book Score: good