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Monkey Truck: colorful picture book with banana-farts and vroom-vrooms

Cory Doctorow at 6:04 am Thu, Feb 10, 2011

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My three-year-old loves Michael Slack's new picture book Monkey Truck, which tells the tale of a mythical monkey/truck hybrid superhero who patrols some distant jungle, saving animals from minor annoyance, danger, and sticky situations. Monkey Truck feasts on mountains of bananas and makes disgusting, banana-scented farts, and does a lot of revving, exciting stuff as he zips around the jungle (which means lots of chances for me to make exuberant vroom-vroom noises).

When a tsunami is visited upon the jungle, Monkey Truck is the animals' only hope: he roars around the jungle with his chameleon friend (saved from squashing by a careless elephant), piling animals high on his back -- hippos, bats, anteaters, wild pigs -- and then he outraces the tsunami's front and gets all his friends to the top of a hill. Monkey Truck!

The artwork is great, colorful and elaborated with lots of details that are fun to talk about during storytime. All told, it's a darned fun storytime treat.

Monkey Truck


I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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  • chairface

    There’s a nearly identical theme on this Adult Swim game.

    http://games.adultswim.com/hot-throttle-twitchy-online-game.html

  • Anonymous

    super karate monkey death car?

  • Jean-Luc Turbo

    Dang that so appealed to my my inner 6 year old.

  • Anonymous

    But but….. TRUKK NOT MUNKY!!!

    Can’t believe I’m the first to say that actually, for an explanation, see here:
    http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Trukk_not_munky

  • Anonymous

    Kind of reminds me to take a 4-hour-energy drink right before storytime, too. This is for kindle and does the bochure for me, right? My aching lips, you Italian Girls!

  • irksome

    Look at this book which features a banana-gas-burning monkey-truck-hybrid.

    Just look at it.

  • BookGuy

    Overdrive engine? That makes no sense. Clearly monkey truck is either turbocharged, supercharged, or perhaps even twincharged. Where was the copyeditor on this? Somebody’s head should roll.

    • RadioSilence

      i’ve driven many old cars with an ‘overdrive’ instead of a 5th gear.
      “Overdrive is a term used to describe a mechanism that allows an automobile to cruise at sustained speed with reduced engine speed, leading to better fuel consumption, lower noise and lower wear.”
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdrive_(mechanics)

      this book looks great, i think this and the Bob Staake one posted last week will be going to my nephew for his birthday.

      • foreigner

        You can have an overdrive gearbox/transmission, but not an overdrive engine. The old car you drove had an overdrive in the transmission. BookGuy is right: the wording of this particular page could have been better. Some form of “turbo” would have been perfect as it communicates well with children.

  • jennybean42

    Bannana farts. This is waaaaay more my little boy’s speed than that kid reciting the table of elements the other day. Whee hee!