Books like Rattletrap Car
By Phyllis Root
For the kid who turns every car ride into a chorus of sound effects, this one hands them a whole vocabulary of squeaks, rattles, and fizzy nonsense words to shout along with. Bouncy, hot, and full of invented sound-words that beg to be read aloud loudly.
A cheerful taxi driver named Dan cruises through town picking up a band member by member, each new passenger adding fresh sounds and colors to the growing crowd inside his cab.
A village kid and a pack of crazy brothers build their own bike from scratch — bucket seat, tin-can handlebars, wood-cut wheels — then go whooping and bumpetty-bumping over sand hills right past their fed-up mum.
A young inventor imagines the ultimate car — complete with a snack bar, a swimming pool, and a robot chauffeur named Robert — then takes it out for a wild test drive with his dad.
The numbers 1 through 100 race each other up an apple tree in a rhyming chant, piling higher and higher until bumblebees threaten trouble at the top.
When evening falls, a crowd of bats flutters from the rafters to fill a moonlit stadium, watching their own all-stars play a topsy-turvy game of baseball.
A wacky crew of hippos, cats, pigs, and cows count from a quiet One all the way up to a LOUD LOUD LOUD Ten — then back down to quiet One again.
A dad whose bed keeps filling up with more and more children — Ben, Billy, twins Beth and Bart, then Brittany, Bella, and Boris — builds the biggest bed in the world to fit everyone in.
Seven quirky dinosaurs — including zooming Zoomer, sleepy Dozy, and weepy Sob — take turns starring in their own tiny tabbed story, each with a personality all its own.
A young boy builds a whole traffic world out of everyday objects — records, shoe boxes, crayons, dandelions — and sends cars, helicopters, and fire engines zooming through it.
A father and his four children set off to catch a bear, crossing grass, a river, mud, a forest, and a snowstorm before a narrow cave forces a sudden, breathless retreat.
A fiercely protective squirrel guards her babies with a determined chook-chook-chook, scaring off trouble again and again — until something much bigger wanders right onto her tree.
