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WORK TITLE: WHOSE BIG RIG?
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WEBSITE: http://www.tonibuzzeo.com/
CITY: Arlington
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 346
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Kirkus Reviews May 15, 2021, review of Buzzeo, Toni: CAUTION! ROAD SIGNS AHEAD. p. NA.
Kirkus Reviews May 15, 2021, , “Buzzeo, Toni: WHOSE BIG RIG?”. p. NA.
Toni Buzzeo is a New York Times bestselling children’s author. She has published twenty-nine picture books for kids as well as eleven books for teachers and librarians. A former librarian and college and high school writing teacher, Toni and her books have won many awards, including a 2013 Caldecott Honor for One Cool Friend, illustrated by David Small. Her fictional human and animal characters echo children’s experiences in a variety of ways. Her nonfiction topics range from inspiring biographies of women scientists to board books about vehicles and transportation. Endlessly enthusiastic, Toni draws on her career experiences as an elementary school librarian in crafting her books and speaking with audiences of children in schools and libraries. Toni lives in Arlington, Massachusetts just downstairs from her two lovable grandchildren (endless sources of inspiration!) and creates in her beloved writing cottage featured in this video.
Lots More About Toni Buzzeo
I was an only child for the first ten years of my life, growing up in Dearborn, Michigan. During that time, my closest companions were my Grandma Mae Mackey and books. I read early and well and lost myself in stories as often as possible.
My mother gave me the gift of reading. She often took me to the Dearborn Public Library (at that time, the Bryant Branch was the Main Library) where I imagined many things in front of the beautiful dollhouse on the second floor and between the pages of many books. Then, when I was eight years old, living in our small ranch house on New York Street, an amazing thing happened. The city built the Snow Branch Library only five blocks away. For a child like me, that was like having Disney World built in my neighborhood!
When I was ten, my siblings began to arrive and within three years, not only was I no longer an only child, but we were a family of four children. I spent a great deal of time caring for my younger brothers and sister, especially reading to them. To this day, when I read a Dr. Seuss book aloud to children, I am transported back in time to that Danish modern couch in our living room, surrounded by the three of them.
As a teenager, I started my writing career as a poet and an anthologist. I spent hours at the Formica kitchen table, copying out poems in longhand into spiral bound notebooks. I selected huge stacks of books each week at the library, and always, several volumes of poetry. I read these poetry books and marked my favorites with scraps of paper. Then, after dinner, when my homework was finished and the dinner table was cleared, I would sit and copy out the poems I loved.
That is how I learned to write. I read and re-read and listened to the words I was reading in my mind. Then I copied them out and listened to them again. I learned to write poetry in that long apprenticeship. Years later, when I was working my way through college, I began to publish my poetry in the college literary magazines, and I began to think of myself as a real writer. Since then, I have always written, in one way or another, publishing in many places and formats.
As a teenager, I also started my library career. Again, there was a long apprenticeship. I worked first as a “page” shelving books at the Dearborn Public Library, in that old stone building with the huge dollhouse outside the children’s room. At eighteen, I took my first full-time job as a library clerk, making money to pay for the college classes I took at night, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English. From there, I progressed through a variety of paraprofessional positions, learning along the way how much I still loved the children’s department of the library.
After college, I moved with my husband Ken Cyll to Buxton, Maine where we bought an old farmhouse and many acres of the original colonial farm. There we raised plenty of vegetables and flowers, a couple of dogs, and our son Topher.
Things all came full circle when in 1988, after teaching writing at the high school and college level for many years, I took my first job as a children’s librarian at the Baxter Memorial Library in Gorham, Maine. I soon enrolled in a second master’s degree program in library and information science and went on to work as a school librarian for sixteen years.
In 1995, I began to write for children. I continued my apprenticeship in that work for five years, and though I didn’t sit at a kitchen table copying longhand anymore, that apprenticeship reminded me of that first writing apprenticeship, so long ago, as I read large stacks of books each week and learned from what was best in them.
Since then, I have published twenty-nine books for children and eleven books for teachers and librarians. These days, I live in two homes. From May through December, I live in a two-family home in Arlington, Massachusetts with my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren living up above me. I write in a small writing cottage in our backyard. (Click here to watch a video about my writing cottage). But in the snowy winter months, I move to sunny Sarasota, Florida where red hibiscus flowers bloom outside my office window and snowy egrets hunt for a lunch of lizards.
I am represented by Stefanie Sanchez Von Borstel at Full Circle Literary.
Personal Honors
1976 BA English Language and Literature
University of Michigan, Dearborn
1978 MA English Language and Literature
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1990 MLIS Library and Information Science
University of Rhode Island, Kingston
1999 Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year
2000 Winner of SCBWI Barbara Karlin Grant for The Sea Chest
2004 University of Michigan-Dearborn School of Education Alumnus of the Year
2013 Maine Literary Award for Children’s Books for One Cool Friend
Toni Buzzeo (1951- ), the acclaimed author of 20 picture books as well as 11 books for educators, was born in Dearborn, Michigan and grew up in the Dearborn Public Libraries, reading nearly every book in the children’s and young adult sections of the Snow Branch library before taking a job downtown at the Main library as a Library Page and then a Library Assistant to put herself through college.
After earning a BA and MA in English from the University of Michigan, she worked for a decade as a college and high school English teacher. She then earned an MLIS from the University of Rhode Island and returned to libraries as a school librarian. She was named Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year in 1999 and continued to work as an elementary school librarian while she launched a successful writing career.
In 2013, Toni’s New York Times best-selling book One Cool Friend, illustrated by David Small, won a Caldecott Honor. It also won the Maine Literary Award for Children’s Books from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance in the same year.
Since her first book, The Sea Chest, won a Maine Lupine Honor in 2003, Toni has received many other awards for her books, including a 2004-2005 Children’s Gallery Award, also for The Sea Chest, and the 2012 Time of Wonder award for Lighthouse Christmas. Her books Dawdle Duckling, Little Loon and Papa, and One Cool Friend have been chosen by the Dolly Parton Imagination Library for international distribution to young children. Just Like My Papa, Stay Close to Mama, and Dawdle Duckling have all been Children’s Book of the Month Club selections as well. Toni currently has four more picture books under contract.
Toni is a bit of a vagabond, writing in a charming writing cottage built by her husband on 35 acres of a colonial farm in Buxton, Maine, writing at the Cambridge Public Library near her grandbaby in Massachusetts, and slipping down to write in her sunny winter nest in Sarasota, Florida when the weather turns blustery at home.
A well-known speaker, Toni speaks extensively in schools as well as at conferences and district and regional professional development trainings, both nationally and internationally. Visit her website at www.tonibuzzeo.com.
Toni Buzzeo
Toni Buzzeo is a New York Times bestselling children’s author. She has published twenty-nine picture books for kids as well as eleven books for teachers and librarians. Toni and her books have won many awards, including a 2013 Caldecott Honor for One Cool Friend, illustrated by David Small. Her fictional human and animal characters echo children’s experiences in a variety of ways. Her nonfiction topics range from inspiring biographies of women scientists to board books about vehicles and transportation. Recent titles include Caution! Road Signs Ahead (illustrated by Chi Birmingham, Rise X Penguin), an oversize board book designed to teach young readers (and riders!) the sign code of the road, Whose Big Rig? (illustrated by Ramon Olivera, Abrams) fourth in her Guess-the-Job series, and When Sue Found Sue, a picture book biography of field paleontologist Sue Hendrickson (illustrated by Diana Sudyka, Abrams).
Endlessly enthusiastic, Toni draws on her career experiences as an elementary school librarian in crafting her books and speaking with audiences of children in schools and libraries. Toni lives in Arlington, Massachusetts just downstairs from her two lovable grandchildren (endless sources of inspiration!) and creates in her beloved writing cottage.
Visit Toni on the Web at https://tonibuzzeo.com/ or on Twitter @Toni Buzzeo
QUOTE: Around the neighborhood or on a road trip, pre-reading passengers will be ready to understand the signs along the way.
Buzzeo, Toni CAUTION! ROAD SIGNS AHEAD Rise x Penguin Workshop (Children's None) $17.99 3, 2 ISBN: 978-0-593-22432-8
Thirty-five road signs explained to toddlers in an extra-thick board book.
Those ubiquitous universal symbols that decorate our streets and highways can be a mystery to kids buckled into their car seats. Explanations written in simple, direct language aim to demystify them. On the inside front cover and its recto page, a four-sentence introduction explains that signs “are a code to let drivers know how to stay safe.” Bright orange text with key words printed in white stands out against the black background. The signs are organized into five increasingly specialized categories: “Everyday,” “Neighborhood,” “Highway,” “Caution,” and “Nature.” All but eight signs are wordless symbols. A full spread is devoted to each one, with the sign on the right and a brief description in a clean black type on a gray page to the left. To adult ears these definitions seem obvious and even redundant, but explanations like “Yield / Let other cars go first!” are admirably successful at translating abstract concepts into concrete terms. Pages cut in the shapes of the signs both add playful variety and ensure small fingers can turn the thick pages. Clean graphics keep the focus on the signs. The final spread offers thumbnail drawings of all the signs by category.
Around the neighborhood or on a road trip, pre-reading passengers will be ready to understand the signs along the way. (Board book. 1-5)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Buzzeo, Toni: CAUTION! ROAD SIGNS AHEAD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A661545909/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=83298f9f. Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.
QUOTE: designed for hard-core machine aficionados
A dream for true big-rig fans.
Buzzeo, Toni WHOSE BIG RIG? abramsappleseed (Children's None) $10.99 5, 25 ISBN: 978-1-4197-4220-0
Meet specialized big rigs involved in building a light-rail system.
Caution! Here’s a board book designed for hard-core machine aficionados. Rhyming text inside striking goldenrod-colored traffic signs on the left-hand page introduces a building task. “Dig the channels so water can flow”; a second, orange sign queries, “Whose big rig is this?” The right-hand page diagrams the machine responsible for the job, with many of the relevant, often quite technical components clearly labeled. Some preschoolers will want to devour every “gripper arm” factoid, but it’s definitely optional reading. A fold-out flap offers more generally accessible information, naming and showing the team at work along with a succinct explanation. A “tunnel borer” team, for instance, will “cut through rock to make way for underground tracks.” Some big rigs, like the excavator and the bulldozer, will be old favorites, but there are many new, intriguing machines and workers to learn about, including the “tie dragon’s crew,” which lays the ties of the tracks, or the “track maintenance specialist,” who “make[s] tracks level.” Tidy illustrations provide readers with clear snapshots of the various machines, and workers are made up of racially and gender diverse crews. The final flap, showing small children playing with a toy train set who have “come to help,” is satisfying.
A dream for true big-rig fans. (Board book. 2-6)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Buzzeo, Toni: WHOSE BIG RIG?" Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A661545943/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d37dc4a7. Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.