cover image Little Driver

Little Driver

Noah Lukas, Davy Jones. Random House Books for Young Readers, $18.95 (16pp) ISBN 978-0-679-87461-4

Reading is anything but a quiet activity with a volume from the My Little Driver series in hand. Tiny batteries hidden in each book's plastic frame power a pantheon of loud, digitally recorded sounds relating to the story line. The reader's job is to press the picture-coded sound button--located in a dashboard of sorts, at the bottom of the plastic frame--when the matching picture shows up in the text. In Little Sailor, a submarine voyage is a leisurely lesson in underwater life, with each realistically painted sea creature clearly labeled. Nine buttons activate the sound effects, among them a propeller ""pouring on power""; an exterior microphone (""Let's go find the whale!""); the drone of a foghorn. In Little Pilot, a trip over the Grand Canyon and sky-jumping are enhanced with such sounds as radio contact with the tower and the vroom of takeoff and landing. It's a whistle-stop train ride in Little Engineer: bells clang, brakes slam and engines roar. In Little Driver, the reader steers a car out of town for a picnic, on the way listening to the radio, honking the horn, hearing the swoosh of the windshield wipers and the click of turn signals, etc. High-tech gimmick, or verisimilitude? Maybe both, but who cares?--it's fun. Ages 3-6. (Apr.)