Starred Review ALA Booklist (Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 2012)

Starred Review Kids (well, all right, mostly boys) who love cars and trucks will find this a particularly intriguing look at the big machines working in the city on land and in the sky. When the garbage truck makes its last pickup, is it done for the day? Opening the foldout reveals the answer is no, as the back end of the truck now empties the trash into a landfill. What about the vacuum truck? Can it fix a street's broken water pipe? Pull the flap down this time and see the truck's pipe (and workers) underground. But the vacuum truck only sucks up the water e water pipe will be fixed once the area is dry. The interactive element will keep readers involved, as will the questions and answers, which are informative and not always obvious. The eye-catching paintings will hold them visually, and Low has done a particularly fine job of making the trucks, trains, and planes as handsome as they are sturdy. Placing both men and women of varying ethnicities in the machines is a welcome touch, too. Thoughtful design, dynamic art, and solid information make this a standout, and if that weren't enough, the picture key at the conclusion gives even more information about each machine.

School Library Journal Starred Review (Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2012)

PreS-Gr 2 This sequel to Low's Machines Go to Work (Holt, 2009) starts with a garbage truck making its rounds and concludes with a foldout aerial view of a plane in flight. In between, workers lay new train tracks, a vacuum truck pumps water out of a tunnel, and a bucket truck and repair crew fix a broken traffic signal. A tower crane lifts a giant beam, and a baggage carrier helps to load a plane. Generously filled with questions, the clear, readable text encourages readers' participation. Richly colored, realistic spreads portray a busy city and follow the course of the day from sunrise to sunset. In this book, Low tends to show more interaction between humans and machinery. The illustrations increase in size when flaps are lifted; this additional artwork responds to questions embedded in the text. Smaller, labeled images are repeated on three closing pages. These images are paired with concise descriptive paragraphs reiterating the purposes of the machines. Another dynamic picture book for children who devour books about machinery or for those fascinated with lift-the-flap materials.— Lynn Vanca, Freelance Librarian, Akron, OH

Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2013)

Machinery-loving preschoolers are first introduced to a particular situation involving vehicles, from a garbage truck to a tower crane to an airplane. What happens next? Lift a flap (which provides an extended scene of the problem at hand) and find out. Just as they did in Machines Go to Work, Low's painterly illustrations display the drama and excitement of a bustling cityscape.

Kirkus Reviews

Trains, planes, trucks and cranes and the people who make them work keep the city moving. "Vroom" goes the garbage truck as it lumbers through town and finishes up at the landfill. The train's brakes "pssssshhhhh" as it passes slowly by the track workers. A vacuum truck, a bucket truck, a tower crane, a baggage carrier and a passenger plane all do their heavy work with their dedicated and skilled operators and support workers. Maintaining and expanding upon the format he employed in his earlier work (Machines Go to Work, 2009), Low presents each vehicle, with an appropriate onomatopoetic sound, in two double-page spreads wherein a simply stated question is posed with the answer appearing on a gate-fold that enlarges the view even further. The machines and workers are sharply focused, large-scaled, detailed and brightly hued, while the city backgrounds are more subtly imagined in softer shades of yellows, purples and browns. When the busy day ends, the plane takes off and soars over a sunset-drenched New York City as nighttime lights begin to twinkle. In an addendum, carefully labeled, smaller-scaled versions of the machines appear with further information in more sophisticated language, a welcome aid to parents in answering the inevitable detail-seeking questions. Young readers who love these powerful machines will find endless fascination here. (Informational picture book. 3-8)