Someone Builds the Dream

A truck book with true social significance!

Lisa Wheeler picture books about trucks and construction equipment have long been popular with young readers and pre-readers. Remember Virginia Lee Burton’s Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939) or Katy and the Big Snow (1943)? How about B.G. Hennessey’s Road Builders (1994), or Bulldozer’s Big Day (2015) by Candace Fleming? You can find these titles at various CADL libraries, and they’re all great for young fans of everything that digs and hauls and goes vroom! But while you’re checking out these classics, take a look at Someone Builds the Dream. Not only does this book have plenty of construction action (the brilliant Loren Long is the illustrator), it also invites the reader to appreciate the workers who operate the machines and handle the tools, bringing the plans of architects and engineers to exuberant fruition. Looking for a celebration of such tradespeople as electricians, welders, and carpenters that reflects the social diversity of the 21st century workforce? It would be hard to do better than this book.