Dig Dig Digging ABC

July 24, 2017
Originally published in the U.K. in 2015, this noisy vehicular alphabet book takes readers down roads, over and under the waves, and into the skies and beyond. As she introduces bulldozers, express trains, icebreaker ships, and more, Mayo maintains a sturdy beat, complete with plenty of sound effects, that itself creates a sense of forward motion and momentum: for the ever-tricky X, “Extra-big-wheeeled monster truck/ grrhumm, grrhumm, grrhumming./ Fast racing, high jumping, and—/ wham!—crazy wheel-standing.” Ayliffe’s crisp, brightly colored collage-style illustrations match the text’s energy, surveying the vehicles from a variety of perspectives and featuring a cast of toylike farmers, cyclists, construction workers, and other professionals and children, including a boy riding his scooter through a park and a windsurfer “swerve, swerve, swerving” on her board. Ages 4–8.

May 1, 2017
Kids seem to have an innate fascination with machinery, and this alphabet of vehicles will challenge them to name 26 and pair them with their corresponding letters of the alphabet.In concept, this is nothing new, but it's Ayliffe's execution that makes this one stand out--but not necessarily in a great way. Intensely saturated colors bleed off the pages, overpowering the simple shapes that lack line definitions and featureless faces (just dots for eyes). From "Ambulance," "Bulldozer," and "Crane" to "Yacht" and "Zooming Rocket," the text glossing each moving vehicle emphasizes activities or signature sounds and is typeset in ever larger fonts to lift the excitement. J is for "Jumbo Jet / Enormous jumbo jet / roar, roar, roaring. / Over fields and buildings, / up...up...soaring!" Exemplars that are out of the ordinary include "Narrow Boat" (revealed in the illustration to be a British canal boat), "Quad Bike" (which many American readers will recognize as an ATV), and "Velodrome Track Bike"; X stands for the "EXtra Big Wheels" of a monster truck. San-serif lower- and uppercases are highlighted in the upper corners. There are a few double-page spreads, but most letters have one page with no segues between them. Kids familiar with themed alphabet books and enraptured with toy vehicles will enjoy repeating the sound effects and guessing what vehicle comes next despite the misleading cover that hints that all of the machines dig. Given the plethora of similar titles, rate this an O for overdone and opt for a better one, such as Ramon Olivera's ABCs on Wheels (2016). (Picture book. 4-7)

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