Trucky Roads

The eponymous main character invites readers to tour a captivatingly silly array of real and fantasy trucks in the groovy, imagination-affirming picture book Trucky Roads, written by Terrestrials podcast host Lulu Miller (Why Fish Don't Exist) and illustrated by Hui Skipp (Maps for Penguins).

"If you can dream it, it could be," says Trucky Roads, a brown-skinned man with a curly, full beard who wears a pink cap, sunglasses, and a bohemian outfit. While "some people look at the road and just see TRUCKS," if you ask Trucky Roads, "you can see there are all KINDS of trucks." Which KINDS of vehicles? Well, there are industrious garbage trucks, helpful dump trucks, and hurrying fire trucks. There are also Earth Trucks, Wind Trucks, Water Trucks and a tow truck towing a Toe Truck, which sports a full foot of pink toes in place of a grill. "And that's just while awake," Trucky says as he leads readers into a cosmic dreamscape where a Cloud Roller makes puffy white clouds paper flat. The book ends with an encouragement to the reader to "add some wheels" and imagine their own fanciful machines.

Miller rolls through the lorry lineup in an upbeat, pun-forward rhythm punctuated by philosophical moments. Skipp's fully saturated, imaginative digital illustrations conjure a host of cartoonish vehicular characters that are exuberant, enchanting, and even (in some cases) edible. Young truck fanatics may find their minds expanded here while the non-vehicularly inclined may see the big machines in a friendlier light. "Truck is in the eye of the beholder," after all. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library