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A review by lagobond
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker
2.0
A fairly cute book, but it doesn't really wow me. It was very obviously written and illustrated by people who aren't familiar with what happens on a construction site, or apparently even how physics works. There's lots of very random, disconnected, at times impossible activity. We see a "cement mixer" (truck) taking a bath to get shiny-bright, and a dump truck which has miraculously managed to get to the top of a giant pile of boulders. One picture shows an excavator surrounded by a willy-nilly arrangement of his day's work: some rectangular holes, a couple round holes, a pile of sand, a pile of boulders; pipes sticking out in random directions; and each trench/hole has the dug-out soil neatly and evenly distributed all around its perimeter. I kept looking at the (otherwise charming) oil pastel illustrations and thinking, that's not how this works! That's not how any of this works! and I am by no means a construction expert.
Sure, we can overlook these inaccuracies because this is a book for toddlers and because we're already pretending that trucks go to bed at night; but I generally prefer not to teach kids nonsense (even while anthropomorphizing, or taking some liberties with fiction). Why should we, when there's some fierce competition, like the stellar [b:Billions of Bricks|27414420|Billions of Bricks|Kurt Cyrus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448831474l/27414420._SX50_.jpg|47463573]. Now this is a book that was created by people who care about every last detail. (Caveat: Billions of Bricks was written for older kids, and it's not a bedtime book. But it is a flawless example of how amazing a children's book can be when people go the extra mile.)
So... yeah. This is a cute book for toddlers who are obstructed with construction equipment, but I wouldn't recommend it otherwise. Like many of the other reviewers have pointed out, this also is a sexist book, as all of the trucks are male, and why is that even still a thing. It did make me yawn though, so it's definitely not the worst bedtime book I've come across.
Sure, we can overlook these inaccuracies because this is a book for toddlers and because we're already pretending that trucks go to bed at night; but I generally prefer not to teach kids nonsense (even while anthropomorphizing, or taking some liberties with fiction). Why should we, when there's some fierce competition, like the stellar [b:Billions of Bricks|27414420|Billions of Bricks|Kurt Cyrus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448831474l/27414420._SX50_.jpg|47463573]. Now this is a book that was created by people who care about every last detail. (Caveat: Billions of Bricks was written for older kids, and it's not a bedtime book. But it is a flawless example of how amazing a children's book can be when people go the extra mile.)
So... yeah. This is a cute book for toddlers who are obstructed with construction equipment, but I wouldn't recommend it otherwise. Like many of the other reviewers have pointed out, this also is a sexist book, as all of the trucks are male, and why is that even still a thing. It did make me yawn though, so it's definitely not the worst bedtime book I've come across.