Zoom! Boom! Bully (Ready-to-Read. Level 1)

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Product Reviews

(2 stars) - Wow. Really surprised... not in a good way.
So the bully goes about smashing through everybody's things. The other characters make him a birthday cake. He smashes it. The end.

(5 stars) - Zoom Boom Bully
My four year old son loves this series of books. The art work is great, and the truck characters are great. He is always asking when he can get another one of the books in this series.

(2 stars) - Questionable Lesson
My grandson loves the Trucktown books, but I've put this one away. Big Rig is a bully who loves to smash and crash his friends' things. He gets rewarded with a birthday cake from his friends, which he proceeds to smash and crash. My grandson loved this book--matter of fact, he loved the whole idea of being a bully and smashing and crashing his friends' things. Sigh... No More Big Rig. Please don't do this to us again!

(3 stars) - Good for truck-loving beginner reader, but that's about it.
I bought this book only because my 5-year-old son loves trucks, and because he's just beginning to read. He's in the habit of "reading" himself to sleep each night after I've tucked him in, and I thought he'd enjoy having a book he could actually read every word of himself. He also really enjoys David Shannon's portrayal of the trucks in Trucktown. For these reasons I've given is three stars and not less.

Be warned: there is just barely a story line, and each page contains approximately zero to three words, so it's not for a child who's already reading, or for an adult reading to a child. And, as at least one other parent mentioned, the story definitely sends children a strange and negative message about bullying. When my son and I read this book together, I used it as a way to discuss what bullying is and how it makes others feel, and the consequences of bullying. Since I'm not thrilled with the content of this book it will most likely be removed from our collection once my son moves on to more difficult reading (which won't be long, since, like I said, this book contains very few words).

(1 stars) - How did this ever get published?
I haven't read any other Trucktown books, so maybe I'm not understanding the whole relationship between this Big Rig character and the other trucks. That said, I don't see how the author could justify this story. It tells in its brief way of the various trucks performing different tasks, and of how the Big Rig comes barreling through with a menacing expression and smashes everything they do. At the end, with pained and shocked "facial" expressions, the other vehicles tell him to stop, that it was all to prepare for his birthday. To which he replies that this is his best birthday ever as he comes roaring through the last of their creations, while wearing the same homicidal leer he had before.

When I read it to my son, we sat staring at that last page and boggling at the ending. No guilt for wrecking everything they did for him? Not so much as a natural consequence to show the readers that maybe bullying is a negative thing? The other vehicles didn't even smile at the end to suggest that maybe they had planned for him to smash everything because he's like that... I mean, maybe they just knew him and accepted him. No, the book is called Zoom Zoom BULLY, and the other characters looked hurt and terrified as he roared towards his final act of destruction, after which there was no consequence at all. What message is that supposed to send? I mean, this is a little kids book. My son is 6. He needs books like this to show him clearly that if he were to try bullying kids, they would not respond by preparing a lavish birthday party where he would be able to go on a violent berserker rampage. It's just a little book, there's not much room, but they could have managed that, at least.

We actually bought this book through our school from Scholastic. I think they need to take another look at the books they provide. There are so many cute, clever, and nicely written little readers. It makes no sense to waste paper on ill-conceived stories that send negative messages.

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