posted on 28 Sep 2021

Beep Beep! By Max Low

One of the challenges of writing a successful picture book for young children is to keep it simple but at the same time, compelling the young reader to keep looking, listening and joining in. It also needs to persuade an adult to pick it up in the first place, which relies on a powerful front cover. This one does the job very well with the bold colours of the title and the curious deep blue moustachioed driver who, with eyes closed, appears to be ‘walking’ the yellow bus! My interest was immediately piqued …

We meet him again after a couple of pages and learn that his name is Bobby – children will be pleased to see that he now has his eyes open and that his big yellow bus runs on time! Despite their overall familiarity of shape, I rather liked the quirky detail of each vehicle because it would encourage lots of questions. Why for instance is there a fish tank inside the fire engine? Why is there an upside down figure on the train? What might happen if Happy Harold’s helium balloons burst and is he bothered about his lost boot?

The different noises of the different vehicles travelling on a range of near and far journeys are boldly written in each left hand corner with the repeated refrain ‘What’s that noise’? All children will enjoy joining in with this. Alliteration always works for me, so I was delighted to meet Little Lemmy with his long, long limousine, Speedy Susan in her super speedy sports car, Friendly Fern with her fantastic fire engine along with all the other curious characters. I loved the way in which the illustrations don’t always fit in the space – this is often how children draw and so it’s great to see that it really doesn’t matter. In fact it is well explained in the text:

‘Her ship is so big

   it won’t all fit

     on this page!’    

The final double page spread includes all the vehicles  with the invitation to take a lift, but the end papers suggest a strong environmental massage as we see a cat carrying a banner with a picture of the Earth, saying: ‘ No, thank you …I think I would rather walk’.

There is so much to talk about in this beautiful second picture book by the talented Max Low  – I  am looking forward to sharing it with young children soon.

Karen Argent

September 2021