The Digger and the Dark

PreS-Gr 3–Digger and his friends are busy working on a park all day. Assembling climbing equipment, surfacing ball courts, and setting up swings keeps the big trucks occupied until bedtime. Just as the vehicles finally get settled for the night, two playful raccoons appear in the blue twilight. The trucks agree to play “only for a minute,” but stay up all night with their new little friends. Each night the furry visitors reappear and keep the trucks awake to chat, or scratch, or have a snack. When at last the trucks can’t stay awake any longer, the raccoons return the care they have received by tucking in Digger and singing a bedtime song. Illustrations capture the brightly colored, anthropomorphic trucks and the striped tails and masked faces of their pals. Each truck has headlight eyes that open wide in excitement, narrow to tired slits, or even spiral dizzily from exhaustion. Their grills form smiles, crinkle crookedly when the trucks are tired, and relax peacefully when they sleep. Hoist plucks apples from trees and Crane’s cable is used as a zipline to entertain the raccoons. Readers will laugh as the trucks get ready for bed. They “change” tires rather than clothes and “read” a manual instead of a bedtime story, but the rituals are very familiar.