Go Girls Go!

Written by Frances Gilbert | Illustrated by Allison Black for S&S Beach Lane Books | Arriving November 2019 | Hardcover Format

Come along for a rollicking ride in this picture book celebration of vehicles that puts girls in the driver’s seat! Girls can race…and girls can fly. Girls can rocket way up high! Piloting fire trucks, trains, tractors, and more, the girls in this book are on the go! Join them for an exuberant journey that celebrates how girls can do—and drive—anything.

Girl power meets things that go in this colorful early picture book. Girls with diverse skin colors, hair colors, and hair textures drive, conduct, steer, speed, rev, fly, build, load, dump, and rocket in vehicles of many different types…From trains and tractors to tugboats, taxis, planes, and motorcycles, these girls “go” in every way, working, playing and saving the day. Girls from previous spreads help girls on later spreads, showing an ideal of cooperation and unity that furthers the value of the girl-power message....The illustrations feature bright primary colors, block shapes, patterns, stars, and large, clear fonts that will appeal to young audiences. With repeated readings, pre-readers will be reciting the words on their own. A hit for girls who identify strongly with girlhood and love things that go. (Kirkus August 2019)

This rousing call to girl power breaks the chain of titles like Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site (2011) that feature anthropomorphized diggers, dozers, and cranes with no one at the controls. It puts girls in the driver’s seat of all kinds of vehicles, in which they haul things around, steer into port, fly through the air, and save people—making a lot of noise as they work. Girls drive, push, and propel through the book, with a dynamic layout dividing the pages into horizontal streaks of movement, followed by pages giving shout-outs in huge, bright letters to the noise each girl makes…and culminating with a chorus of “GO, GIRLS, GO!” Active verbs abound, the rhyming text is propulsive, and Black’s illustrations are blasting with color and movement…. (Booklist October 2019)