Toe Truck Joe, written by June Sobel, reviewed by Klaudia Janek

Student Reviewer: Sean B.
Summary: This book is about a Tow Truck who is named Joe and his pal Patch the pup. Together they go around all day helping the people of the community. They help cars who have broken down among other things. The book commonly uses the phrase “all for one and one for all”. However, soon after, a dairy truck crashes and brings the whole road to a halt. The dairy truck crashed because it was going too fast. Joe and Patch however, go to save the day. With the town working together they clean up the town from the cookies and the spilled milk. With those products they made ice cream for the town. Joe and Patch worked hard all day and got a lot accomplished.

Straight Talk for Librarians: This book tells a great tale of how a community can come together and accomplish something big. Joe and Patch work hard all day to help their friends and then they get to enjoy an ice cream together. The computer graphics used to illustrate the story paints a bright picture and gives readers plenty of things to look at.. This book could be used by parents or teachers to provide students with vocabulary about cars and trucks. There are a lot of honks and bangs that Joe has to deal with. There are also a lot of rhyming words in the text. Readers just learning about rhyming words will have a great time with this text. There is a sense of community and how important it is to be helpful. This would be a perfect book for readers who love cars and trucks. It is a good independent reading choice. The illustrations add a lot to the context of the story. It will also help emerging readers learn the words “stop” and “go”, which are printed both red and green. The cars and animals are really cute and both the text and illustrations convey how busy city streets can be.This book is a good choice for a school, classroom, or individual library.