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Author: Margaret Mayo
Illustrator: Alex Ayliffe
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Year: 2006
ISBN: 978-0805079852
Format: Board Book
Pages: 22
Age Range: Baby, Toddler, Preschooler
Kid Love Factor: 5/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 3/5
Dig Dig Digging is full of the large vehicles that many toddlers love, complete with rhythmic, onomatopoeic phrasing.
Diggers are good at dig, dig, digging,
scooping up the earth, and lifting and tipping.
They make huge holes with their dig, dig, digging.
They can work all day.
The book goes through 10 different machines, from construction vehicles like diggers and road rollers to emergency vehicles like fire engines to service vehicles like garbage trucks. Each spread of pages describes the machine and what it's good at, then finishes with "They can work all day".
It's cute, it's catchy, it's...kinda irritating. It's also Boo's favourite right now. With lots of action words and sound effects, this book is practically made for expanding toddler vocabularies and imitation. Not to mention their recognition of vehicles. The illustrations are colourful and effective but not very detailed. True vehicle-lovers will likely demand more-photorealistic options, but Boo is thus far content and now very excited to see a garbage truck on the street, something he'd never before been interested in.
Autism Spectrum Bonus: The abundance of verbs is great for expanding language or comprehension, an especially nice bonus if you're struggling to introduce action words to a very concrete thinker. There's also lots of machine-noise words for encouraging imitation. Boo enjoys yelling out "They can work all day!" when I pause for him at the end of each page; it didn't take him long to work out the pattern. The brightly coloured pictures also include the people who are necessary for the machines to run, which might be good to point out to little ones who are normally too intent on fascinating vehicles to notice things as boring as people.
Bottom Line:
Dig Dig Digging is often repeating,
Pages turning, toddler grinning, vrooming and beeping,
Soon we'll be perfect at machine-like creaking,
We'll be reading all day.
Links:
I've never seen a children's book review site with an ASD "bonus" focus - I LOVE IT! Can't wait to read more (I have a 4 yr old with ASD and a 22 month old with isolated language delays so this is great!) Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAlysia
I hadn't seen a book review site with ASD leanings either, so I figured I'd start one. ;)
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it! And I love your user name.
I remember that one too! Our son is/was a huge transportation fan too. There are so many cute car and truck books out there. Maybe your son would like "Trucks Go". I always find it fun to read (lots of silly noises).
ReplyDeletePS We'd be happy to have you do a guest post on our blog sometime, maybe talking about what you look for in your "autism spectrum bonus" parts of your review. No obligation, but of course I'd include an intro and link back to your blog, so maybe it would bring you some new readers. :)
ReplyDeleteHmm, sadly it appears my library doesn't have Trucks Go. I'll keep it in mind next time I'm topping up an Amazon purchase to get free shipping. :) Sounds like it'd be a hit.
ReplyDeleteAs for the guest post, I'd love to. I'll email you.
Love the autism spectrum bonus! Great idea for a blog! And I'm not just saying that because you put me in your blog roll...thanks for that!!
ReplyDelete@Lynn - I read two entries of your blog and laughed out loud three times. No thanks required for the blogroll link. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment!