Extremely Cute Animals Operating Heavy Machinery
Extremely Cute Animals Operating Heavy Machinery
By: David Gordon
I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book on my own—mostly because I don’t gravitate towards books with trucks and cars. Not for my personal collection anyway. But this book was a promotional book at Barnes and Noble—you got it for cheap (or free?) if you bought x+y+z. And I was lugging around more than enough books. An employee, an older gentleman, pulled it off the shelf for me and said it was a new favorite of his. So it got tucked in my arms.
I’m glad I picked it up. It’s a great book about bullying—whit it can look like and how to overcome it.
It starts when a bunny is making a sandcastle and some other animal kids come knock it down. Some friends help her rebuild it, and the bullies knock it down again. So the cute animals are mad. And they build an amusement park to replace the playground. They do this with heavy machinery.
Towards the end we see the bullies on the outside looking sad. They’re not being included. And if the book ended there I would not be writing this review. Because we work hard to teach kids to not react to hate with hate. I didn’t want this book to end on that note. But the bunny invites the bullies into the park. And they even made a special place for them to knock down sandcastles.
I love that the cute animals were able to channel their anger into something productive and that they didn’t use that anger to hurt anyone. And they also made a point of including everyone.
I think this book would be great in classroom libraries and for home use. It’s a great book, and I’m glad it’s part of my collection!
