My Big Truck Book (My Big Board Books)($7.99Value)

Description

Roger Priddy's My Big Truck Book is the perfect gift for kids who love trucks and all things that move! On the big, sturdy board pages, they'll discover bright, bold photographs of all different kinds of trucks, from farm trucks to fire trucks to construction vehicles. Each has their name written underneath, so that children can learn what they're called, build their truck vocabulary, and start to develop word and picture association. Designed in Roger Priddy's classic, timeless format, this book has enduring appeal and educational value that sustains fun, stimulating reading, again and again. Also available: My Big Animal Book, My Big Train Book Priddy Books are ..."visually delightful with an interactive element." - School Library Journal Roger Priddy 's passion for educating children through fun, informative and engaging books has led him to create some of publishing's most enduring and successful nonfiction early learning books. Bestselling titles include First 100 Words and See Touch Feel . Roger lives in London and has three children, who have been the inspiration behind many of his best publishing ideas. Chapter One The Caravan We have experience of the earlier interstellar colony, Camelot. Considerable information reached Earth from Camelot, describing both mistakes and success, before communication stopped. Destiny is our second try. Destiny will succeed. --Naren Singh, Secretary-General, United Nations, 2427 A.D. 2722 A.D., Spiral Town Junior at fourteen had grown tall enough to reach thehighest cupboard. She stretched up on tiptoe, found thespeckles shaker by feel, and brought it down. Then shesaw what was happening to the bacon. She shouted,"Jemjemjemmy!" Jemmy's eleven-year-old mind was all in the worldbeyond the window. Junior snatched up a pot holder and moved the pan offthe burner. The bacon wasn't burned, not yet, not quite. "Sorry," Jemmy said without turning. "Junior, there's acaravan coming." "You never saw a caravan." Junior looked through thelong window, northeastward. "Dust. Maybe it's the caravan.Here, turn this." Jemmy finished cooking the bacon. Junior shook salt andspeckles on the eggs, sparingly, and returned the shaker to thecupboard. Brenda, who should have been stirring the eggs, andThonny and Greegry and Ronny were all crowded along the longwindow--the Bloocher family's major treasure, one sheet of glass ameter tall, three meters from side to side--to watch what was, afterall, only a dust plume. They ate bread and scrambled hen's eggs and orange juice. Brenda,who was ten, fed Jane, who was four months old. Mom and Dadhad been up for hours doing farmwork. Mom was eating poachedplatyfish eggs. Platyfish were Destiny life; their bodies didn'tmake fat. Mom was trying to lose weight. Jemmy wolfed his breakfast, for all the good that did. The restof the children were finished too. The younger kids squirmed liketheir chairs were on fire; but you couldn't ask Mom and Dad tohurry. They weren't exactly dawdling, but the kids' urgencyamused them. The long window was behind Jemmy. If he turned his back onthe rest of the family, Dad would snap at him. Junior emptied her coffee mug with no sign of haste, veryadult, and set it down. "Mom, can you handle Jane and Ronny?" Seven-year-old Ronny gaped in shock. Before he could scream,Mom said, "I'll take care of the baby, dear, but you take Ronnywith you. He has to do his schoolwork." Ronny relaxed, though his eyes remained wary. Junior stood,Her voice became a drill sergeant's. "We set?" Brenda, Thonny, Greegry, Ronny, and Jemmy surged towardthe door. There was a pileup in the lock while they sorted outtheir coats and caps, and then they cycled through in twoclusters, out of the house, streaming toward the Road. Juniorfollowed. The younger three were half-running, but Junior with her longlegs kept up with them. She wasn't trying to catchJemmy, who at eleven had no dignity to protect. The sun wasn't above the mountains yet, but Quicksilver was,a bright spark dim in daylight. The line of elms was as old as Bloocher House. They weretwenty-five meters from the front of the house, the last barrierbetween Bloocher Farm and the Road. To Jemmy they seemed topartition earth and sky. He ran between two elms and was first toreach the Road. To the right the Road curved gradually toward Spiral Town.Left, northwest, it ran straight into the unknown. That way layWarkan Farm, where four mid-teens stood in pairs to watch thedust plume come near. The Warkan children had been schooled at Bloocher House, ashad their parents before them. Then, when Jemmy was six, theBloocher household computer died. For the next week or two Dadwas silent and dangerous. Jemmy came to understand that a majorsocial disaster had taken place. For five years now, Jemmy and his siblings and all of theWarkan children had trooped three houses around the Road'scurve to use the Hann computer. The dust plume no longer hid what was coming toward SpiralT