March 17th, 2008
The TRUCKTOWN Tour was just too much fun. We started here in NY with all of the illustrators: Dave Shannon, Loren Long, and Dave Gordon. We all wore our Trucktown blue coveralls. And we smashed and crashed our way from NY to CT to NJ. Then Loren and I covered the Midwest where he lives. And Dave S. and I rolled through the West where he lives.
But our first stop was at the school near me in Brooklyn where I had worked with preschoolers to get inspiration for all of the Trucktown characters. (SMASH! CRASH! is dedicated to all of those preschoolers and their wonderful teachers.) We showed the kids how we put the book together and how we came up with the final illustrations. And then we all yelled SMASH! and CRASH! as loud as we possibly could.
And now I can’t wait for the other books to come out this June. There will be 2 Ready-to-Reads, 2 board books, and a couple coloring and activity books. It’s amazing to me to see the characters come to life. Jack is racing around. Gabby is still talking. And Melvin is just worried about everything.
Check your garage. Here come the Trucktown trucks.
–Jon Scieszka
Everyone is a truck. And everyone acts exactly like the 4 -7 year-olds I’ve learned so much from. The Trucktown trucks, like their kid counterparts, love to race around, roar around, get into everything, try out anything, and get to work at the serious business of play. The idea for Trucktown came to me when I started thinking about how funny and smart and active even the littlest kids are. I wanted to make a world as smart and funny and active as them. I thought about what I loved when I was growing up with my five brothers. I thought about trucks. So here is the first bit of the website.
