Postscript: From “Little House” to “Amazing Cars on the Construction Site”

 
 
On Valen­tine’s Day 2017, a pic­ture book titled “Amaz­ing Con­struc­tion Trucks” launched in the US, draw­ing enthu­si­as­tic cheers from young fans. You might be a lit­tle surprised—why a book about con­struc­tion sites and con­struc­tion vehi­cles was released on Valen­tine’s Day? But if you’ve ever had a child or two fas­ci­nat­ed by cars, machin­ery, or con­struc­tion sites, you’ll under­stand the obses­sion that rivals the love between lovers. Fur­ther­more, this new book is a sequel to the incred­i­bly pop­u­lar “Good­night, Con­struc­tion Trucks,” pub­lished in 2012. It reached num­ber one on the New York Times best­seller list and has count­less young fans. They’ve been eager­ly await­ing more excit­ing sto­ries about the capa­ble and fun-lov­ing con­struc­tion vehi­cles on con­struc­tion sites for five years. How could they not be impa­tient?

 
 
Look­ing back, the five-year wait was worth it. This sequel not only builds on the suc­cess of the orig­i­nal, but also adds even more excite­ment and vari­ety. In the first install­ment, the pro­tag­o­nists were five pow­er­ful con­struc­tion vehi­cles: a crane, a cement mix­er, a dump truck (a dump truck), a bull­doz­er, and a large exca­va­tor (an exca­va­tor). In the sequel, they’re still the pro­tag­o­nists, but faced with a project of unprece­dent­ed scale, these five vehi­cles alone are sim­ply not enough. So, the cement mix­er blares its horn, and five oth­er pow­er­ful trucks step up to the plate: a skid steer loader, a trencher, a flatbed trail­er, a front-end loader, and a con­crete pump truck! What a pro­fes­sion­al team, isn’t it? On Ama­zon, some read­ers com­plained that sev­er­al of the con­struc­tion vehi­cles seemed unfa­mil­iar to adults, not just chil­dren. But sur­pris­ing­ly, the chil­dren loved them just as much. The book clear­ly demon­strates the uses of these vehi­cles, and to chil­dren, their amaz­ing abil­i­ties bor­der on mag­ic.

   
In the pre­vi­ous episode, five con­struc­tion vehi­cles debuted one by one, show­cas­ing their indi­vid­ual capa­bil­i­ties before enter­ing a night­time rit­u­al on the con­struc­tion site. It was a pic­ture book with a har­mo­nious bal­ance of move­ment and still­ness, seam­less­ly blend­ing the fren­zy of con­struc­tion vehi­cles on the con­struc­tion site with the bed­time rit­u­al. No won­der it’s so pop­u­lar with chil­dren and adults alike. The sequel, “Amaz­ing Con­struc­tion Vehi­cles,” main­tains this seam­less fusion while also tak­ing on a new chap­ter. The new sto­ry begins with a new day, as the five pro­tag­o­nists awak­en to the ris­ing sun, seam­less­ly con­nect­ing with the pre­vi­ous book. How­ev­er, a mas­sive new project soon emerges, inject­ing an ele­ment of excite­ment into the work. Instead of sim­ply parad­ing around one by one as in the pre­vi­ous install­ment, the five pro­tag­o­nists call upon five new part­ners to join them, and through team­work, they work togeth­er to com­plete the task. Through­out the book, we encounter sev­er­al per­fect team­work: a skid steer loader and a bull­doz­er clear obsta­cles; an exca­va­tor and a trencher work togeth­er to lay a pipeline; a flatbed trail­er helps a crane deliv­er mate­ri­als; a front-end loader and a dump truck clear dirt and grav­el; and a con­crete pump truck helps a cement mix­er trans­port con­crete to high ground. As the book puts it, “This incred­i­ble team is tru­ly unbeat­able!” The secret to their invin­ci­bil­i­ty lies in the team’s cama­raderie and coop­er­a­tive spir­it. Going a step fur­ther than the first book, the author empha­sizes that even the most pow­er­ful con­struc­tion vehi­cles are not omnipo­tent. More impor­tant­ly, each vehi­cle has its own role with­in the team, and every mem­ber must work togeth­er whole­heart­ed­ly.

 
 
Care­ful read­ers will also notice a sub­tle but sig­nif­i­cant change in the sequel. In the first book, all the con­struc­tion vehi­cles were male! Yes, the first five pro­tag­o­nists were all referred to as “he.” In the sequel, how­ev­er, at least two of the new com­pan­ions are referred to as “she”: the skid steer loader and the flatbed trail­er. Besides the front-end loader, the oth­er two could also be female. This is a very wel­come change. After all, many young car enthu­si­asts are girls, and even more par­ents read with their chil­dren than moth­ers. Why should the heroes of con­struc­tion sites only be male?

 
 
In fact, author Sher­ri Dusky Ricoeur is a woman. How did she come up with the idea of writ­ing a book about con­struc­tion vehi­cles on con­struc­tion sites? It all came down to her young son. A moth­er of two boys, Sher­ri was already in her ear­ly for­ties when she wrote her debut chil­dren’s book, “Good­night, Con­struc­tion Vehi­cles.” At the time, she was still a pro­fes­sion­al design­er. Her busy day­time sched­ule made her cher­ish her evenings with her two chil­dren. She always read sto­ries to them, read with them, or just play­ful­ly played with them. Her youngest son was incred­i­bly ener­getic, and every night before bed, he would toss and turn. He was also a huge car enthu­si­ast, espe­cial­ly con­struc­tion vehi­cles. So, the bed­time rit­u­al depict­ed in “Good­night, Moon” became a rit­u­al of say­ing good­bye to var­i­ous con­struc­tion dri­ve­ways. One night, as a weary Sher­ri left her son’s room, she saw the toy con­struc­tion vehi­cles strewn across the floor. An idea struck her: Why not doc­u­ment this “eccen­tric” rit­u­al of her son’s and turn it into a sto­ry? And why not con­sid­er pub­lish­ing it as a book? After all, there are so many young car enthu­si­asts and their par­ents out there.

 
 
It turns out that since child­hood, Sheri had dreamed of becom­ing a writer, and it was none oth­er than Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton, the cre­ator of the pic­ture book “Lit­tle House.” When Sheri was four, her grand­moth­er read “Lit­tle House” to her, and she fell head over heels for it. The beau­ti­ful images and poet­ic lan­guage left a last­ing impres­sion on her. I also hap­pened to be the one who trans­lat­ed the Chi­nese ver­sion of “Lit­tle House.” While the text isn’t writ­ten in verse, it pos­sess­es the rhythm of poet­ry. From that moment on, Sheri aspired to be a writer and poet, with Lee Bur­ton as her role mod­el. Sheri also loved draw­ing from a young age. Her school­ing some­times focused on art and some­times lit­er­a­ture, but after start­ing work, she ini­tial­ly pur­sued a design career that required the inte­gra­tion of text and illus­tra­tion. This was­n’t her child­hood dream, but some­where along the way, she became the moth­er of two boys. And by some strange coin­ci­dence, Lee Bur­ton is also a moth­er of two boys. “Lit­tle House” was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten to teach her sons about the con­cept of time!

 
 
This is prob­a­bly not entire­ly a coin­ci­dence. I pre­fer to believe that this is the mag­i­cal pow­er of role mod­els, because Shelly is very obsessed with Lee Bur­ton and his works. She knows that the moth­er is best at cre­at­ing based on the inter­ests of her two sons. Because of their fas­ci­na­tion with var­i­ous cars, Lee Bur­ton also cre­at­ed “The Run­away Engine”, “McMul­li­gan and His Steam Shov­el”, “Cad­dy and a Big Snow”, “Cable Car Maple” and oth­er must-have books for lit­tle car fans. I think Shelly’s suc­ces­sive cre­ations such as “Good­night, Cars on the Con­struc­tion Site”, “Train Car­ni­val Dreams” and “Amaz­ing, Cars on the Con­struc­tion Site” are obvi­ous­ly fol­low­ing and pay­ing trib­ute to that pre­de­ces­sor. Shelly’s most recent book is “Big Machines: The Sto­ry of Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton” (Big Machines: The Sto­ry of Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton).
Machines: The Sto­ry of Vir­ginia Lee
Bur­ton, the book was pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2017. To cre­ate it, Sheri also vis­it­ed Lee Bur­ton’s eldest son, the renowned sculp­tor Aris Bur­ton Demetrius, to col­lab­o­rate with him on telling his moth­er’s sto­ry. Isn’t that a per­fect dream come true?

   
How­ev­er, Shelly’s suc­cess is also due to her col­lab­o­ra­tion with an illus­tra­tor like Tom Licht­en­hold. The three books men­tioned above are all Tom’s mas­ter­pieces of illus­tra­tion. He almost per­fect­ly blends the real world and the imag­i­nary world, the live­ly and bustling scenes with the lazy and peace­ful sleep­ing rit­u­als. In “Amaz­ing Trucks on the Con­struc­tion Site”, he also accu­rate­ly depicts the schemat­ic dia­grams of the use of var­i­ous con­struc­tion vehi­cles to a cer­tain extent. Like his oth­er book “Sharks Fight­ing Trains”, they are all mas­ter­pieces that seam­less­ly blend knowl­edge and enter­tain­ment. Peo­ple can’t help but admire and say, “Amaz­ing, Tom Licht­en­hold!”

Writ­ten in Bei­jing on May 9, 2017