The Book Bus

Books provide an old truck with a new sense of purpose in Moore and Wray’s community story, which, per an end note, takes inspiration from Moore’s mobile bookstore. After a day of usefully hauling cherries, Tilly, a happy-go-lucky green farm truck, looks forward to evenings spent listening to the girl who inhabits the farmhouse read aloud: “Tilly loved drifting off to sleep, imagining marvelous mermaids, searching scientists, or pirouetting panda ballerinas.” After the child grows up and larger trucks arrive at the farm, Tilly wonders whether her helpful days are done. But when the vehicle ventures solo into town to distribute the child’s old books, the result gives the truck a second life. While storybook-sounding text offers thoughtful internality to the book’s vehicle protagonist, Helm’s carefully shaded rural landscapes play things straight, depicting an apparently self-driving VW pickup without anthropomorphized elements. Human characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4–8. [em](Feb.) [/em]