The Little Blue Digger
Harriet Tuppen, Branislav Gapic
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Nov. 9, 2015)
A Fun and Bright Construction Site Story for 2-5 Year Olds"Everyone in Builders Town was very busy building things. Everyone, that is, except for Little Blue."Little Blue doesn’t join in the construction work in Builders Town because the other trucks think he’s too little to help. Instead, he spends his days watching, wishing he were bigger and stronger. Then, one day, a mishap at the construction site leaves a team member in a tricky situation and Little Blue rushes in to help! Can he earn the bigger trucks’ respect and a permanent place on the construction team…? Young readers will love following along as this sweet story of teamwork and friendship unfolds!This beautifully illustrated book is part of the much-loved Truck Tales with a Heart series for preschoolers, which follows the fun adventures of a team of construction vehicles. Readers will get to know Little Blue (a very little excavator), Big Yellow (a bossy backhoe), Strong Green (a proud and serious bulldozer), Tall Orange (a wobbly crane) and Wide Red (a vain, but hardworking, dump truck). The stories will be enjoyed by all young fans of construction vehicles! While written as fun stories for children to enjoy, the books in this series also carry gentle but important messages of friendship, kindness and acceptance of differences. They are perfect for parents and children to read together at bedtime! The Kindle versions of these picture books, with their bold bright colours and simple clear text, work well as ebooks for kids. IllustrationsThe characters in the Truck Tales with a Heart series are brought to life by illustrator Branislav Gapic, who gives each vehicle its own charming personality. Branislav starts by drawing and coloring the pictures by hand and then filters them in Photoshop to achieve a unique, child-friendly style.The pictures are simple and colorful, but they also contain additional fun details to amuse young children and encourage discussion. See if you can spot the grumpy traffic cone that just had a rock bounce off his head in The Little Blue Digger, the hydrant who is so cold he can only spurt ice cubes in The Little Blue Digger and the Christmas Tree and the bossy rooster in The Little Blue Digger and the Very Muddy Day.About The AuthorHarriet Tuppen left the corporate world several years ago to work from home and spend more time with her three children. With a little more time on her hands (though rather less than she expected!), she wrote a book for her littlest one's third birthday. What did Oliver like...? Diggers ... check! Anything blue ... check! And so the Little Blue Digger books began. Since then, Harriet has continued writing Little Blue Digger stories from her home on Vancouver Island. She weaves gentle messages of kindness and inclusivity into the adventures and includes plenty of female trucks in strong and central roles, hoping, in this way, to make a difference to the (sometimes rather combative!) world of preschooler truck books. Harriet hopes that you enjoy reading the Little Blue Digger books with your young readers as much as she has enjoyed reading them with Oliver and his sisters!