Blue and Toad are out for an ordinary drive when something red goes past far too fast, then comes back to say hello. Racer Red is low, sleek and built for one thing, and she wants a race. Blue is a truck. Blue is not built for one thing. Blue says yes anyway.

Alice Schertle writes in the same bouncing rhyme that made this the number one bestselling truck in American picture books, and the sound words do the work out loud: beep, beep, zooooom. The whole farm turns out to watch, Goose and Hen and Pig and Cow lining the fence, and the finish line lands on the only message that is any use to a four year old. Win or lose, it was fun to try.

Jill McElmurry's soft mottled paintwork keeps the race warm rather than tense, which is exactly why it works at bedtime and not just at breakfast. Thirty two hardcover pages, Clarion Books, and the newest stop in a series most households already own two of.