Roadworks (Sally Sutton, Walker Books, $27.95 hb, ISBN 9781921150166, July) ****

‘Plan the road. Plan the road. Mark it on the map. Hammer in the marking pegs. PING! BANG! TAP!’ So begins this energetic and rhythmic picture book that takes the reader through the various stages of making a road—from map-making through to earth-moving, tar-rolling, lighting and planting trees along the verge. There are even pages devoted to the workmen’s lunch-time on the worksite, and the final celebrations of cars and buses driving on the road for the first time. Perfectly aimed at two-to-five-yearolds, the book caters for its younger readers with bold colourful pictures and strong onomatopoeic words that lend themselves to shouting: Squelch! Spluck! Splat! At the same time, older readers, especially boys, will love the detail of the gradually completed building project, with all its attendant machinery, road-signs and workmen in uniform. An illustrated page of machine facts completes the book, with brief descriptions of excavators, truck-mounted cranes, graders and the like. Roadworks is written by New Zealand playwright and children’s author Sally Sutton (Crazy Kiwi Tops and Tails) and illustrated by first-timer Brian Lovelock. It’s a beautifully bright and noisy book that satisfies the curiosity of children who need to know how things get made.

Rochelle Siemienowicz is a Melbourne writer and reviewer

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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