Anyone who's ever been within earshot of preschool story time knows the classic nursery-rhyme song "The Wheels on the Bus," where the wheels go "round and round, round and round, round and round."
This joyful take on that rhythmic read-aloud ride takes children to the streets of India, where it's the tuk tuk wheels that go round and round. (A tuk tuk--pronounced "took took"--is a small, three-wheeled motorized shared taxi that, in illustrator Jess Golden's skillful hands, looks a bit like a friendly green and yellow insect.) People in the street jump on and off, the rupees paid to the moustachioed driver, or wala, go "ching ching ching" into his hand, and the tuk tuk riders say "Namaste-ji" and go "bobble-bobble-bobble"--that's right--"all through the town." Mischievous monkeys, traffic-blocking "moo-moo-cows," spraying elephants, and even some Diwali fireworks add to the fun of the tuk tuk's bobbling, jumbling journey, from morning's bustle until night when the cows are sleeping and it's time for the tuk tuk, now empty of passengers, to go home.
In The Wheels on the Tuk Tuk, India-born Surishtha Seghal and her son, Kabir Sehgal (the team behind A Bucket of Blessings) revel in fun-to-say words like squish and swish, and playful wordplay like "poppa-doppa-doms" (the crisp flat snack known as papadoms, as explained in the book's handy glossary). Golden's (Snow Dog, Sand Dog) cartoonish watercolor, pastel and colored pencil illustrations are expressive and artful, and, with a positively edible color palette, paint a warm, welcoming picture of a festive day on the streets of India. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness