Little Blue Truck Board Book Review

For Christmas, Baby Q got a little board book library as his "big" Christmas present. I wrapped each individual book in tissue paper so he could enjoy opening them even more. He loved it.

One of his books was new to me: Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle, and illustrated by Jill McElmurry. Animal sounds and a truck in the same board book? It definitely sounded promising. I researched and ordered online, as I usually do with books. When it arrived, I had my doubts: compared to his usual board books, this had a lot of words on each page (about four lines). There was no way he would listen to the full text as a twelve month old.
I was wrong. Mostly.
A lot of the words are sound effects (like oink and beep) and the lines themselves rhyme. It quickly became a favorite board book (tied possibly with Wibbly Pig is Happy and Merry Mother Goose, both old books not in print in the format we read them in).
He will occasionally try to turn pages early, but mostly just lets me read it to him. Two months after he received it, it is still on our daily reading shelf. Anymore we read it, on average, once or twice a day (compared to 2 to 5 times a day the first few weeks after we got it). To me, that is one of the biggest indicators of a successful board book.

 On the back cover, it mentions a free downloadable party kit. Since his birthday wouldn't be for close to a year, I ignored it for a while, but curiosity got the better of me.
First of all, congratulations to the creators of the book for having a cute, simple, easy to navigate website. I was impressed.

 As for downloadables, there are two free "kits" you can download: the Activity Kit and the Party Kit. Both are adorable.
The Activity Kit has a simple maze, a page to match an illustrated animal to the (typed word) sound it makes, some cut-out play figures, and a counting page, a garland that spells "BEEP!," paper Christmas ornaments, and a couple drawing prompts.
The Party Kit includes "Pin the Hat on Blue," party hats, cupcake toppers, colorful bunting flags, and coloring pages of animals and Little Blue Truck to share with party guests. My daughter saw everything and excitedly insisted that Baby Q's second birthday party would be Little Blue Truck themed.
She might be right.
 Today I was looking for a "new" activity to do with my 14 1/2 month old. I printed one page of the cupcake toppers on sticker paper, and printed the coloring page of Little Blue Truck. I showed Baby Q a blue colored pencil and demonstrated coloring the page. He made a small mark in addition to what I had done, and wanted to show me.
So cute.

Next I cut out and peeled the stickers. Now that was interesting to him. He hasn't handled many stickers yet in his young life. I showed him how we stick it to the paper. Then we clapped and said, "Yay!" He like the clapping part of the sticker game and did that a lot, too.

I almost forgot. A couple Sundays ago, we brought this board book to church. Two separate moms, at different times, saw it and started exclaiming over how much their family likes it.
It's a winner.
Below is the official Little Blue Truck trailer, as found on their website.