May Day and Many Machines by Penny Dolan

Maytime, and a new picture book has arrived from Little Tiger's publication list for young and very young children. Then, yesterday, I came home from the library with another picture book title. Both might be for my next Under-Five Storytimes.

 What links the titles? They both involve some sort of transport, and I am taking them in case one of the regular audience comes along. He may or he may not - patterns of home life change over the holidays, but if he does appear, I'll be ready. 

Like many boys - and probably many girls - he really enjoys books about all sorts of machines. There are lots of children who are fans of cars, trains, diggers, lorries, planes, cranes, boats  and every sort of mechanical thing. 

The Little Tiger title was a very short and simple feely book, useful for a quick start to a session:

 

The other, the library title, involves helping/working with trains, engines and even cranes. The story is longer - too long? if so, I can speed it up - and with far subtler illustrations:

I have begun looking around for transport titles and books about machines. There are favourites, of course, like this one old and two not quite so old classics.

 

 

 

 Here's one that is a huge favourite for idling over, side by side, but sadly not at Storytime:

 

 There are even books that echo well-known rhymes:

 Or ones with familiar tv families and characters:

 

 Avoiding dinosaur/digging machine titles,  here's a new one that looks a lot of fun.

 Or for older enthusiasts, though not for my Storytime, this interesting idea:

  

And I'm sure that many homes have modern versions of this well-worn tale:

There are quite a lot of transport titles but maybe not as many as I'd hoped for. 

Which leads me to my question. With all the cute 'n cosy, emotion-centred picture books, do we need a few more mechanical titles? Do you have any recommendations? 

And how do such books fit into a Future Greener Age?

Happy May Day!

Penny Dolan