Vrooom, Vrooom!

May 1, 2021
A child playing with a toy car takes an imaginative road trip. The onomatopoeic title captures the fervency with which some children love their toy cars. "This is how I drive my car," the book opens, showing readers a steering wheel as if looking at it from the driver's seat. Off races a red car on the next spread with a "VROOOM!" in oversized gray lettering on a black background. A couple of spreads later, readers see a large, pitch-black hand holding a tiny car the same color as the red car previously seen: It's a child pushing a toy, the family poodle also engaging in the play. (At one point, the child even runs the car down the poodle's back.) The vibrant green, yellow, and red colors of a stoplight--as well as bold, abstract shapes and simple, clean lines--dominate these stylized illustrations that evoke an earlier decade: Many of the cars are shaped as if they belong in the 1950s or '60s. The child (and car!) even take a nap as well as stop for lunch (a bowl of "all-the-letters soup" that spells out CAR), but then it's back to zooming: "G is G. O is O. GO." The streamlined compositions are uncluttered and eye-catching: One spread about the rules of the road shows six large circles laid out in a row; one is red for stopping and another green for go. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A lively ode to play and to things that go vrooom. (Picture book. 4-10)

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