Christmas Trucks

From snowplows to tractors, take a trip to the Christmas tree farm to see all the trucks working hard in the winter! Pictures throughout the story help young Tonka fans learn new vocabulary!

With fun rhyming text that features the colors, sights, and sounds of the season, The Christmas Truck is sure to be a cheerful addition to your family's library. What could be merrier than Christmastime? Follow the holiday adventures of the Christmas truck and his animal friends as they choose the perfect Christmas tree Your kids will love this glittered die-cut board book that celebrates favorite Christmas traditions. Children who can't get enough of cars, trains, and anything that goes vroom will especially enjoy this fun way to anticipate Christmas morning.

Add a big dose of Christmas cheer to an array of trucks for counting and you have the components of read-aloud holiday magic. One doughnut truck, on a cold winter day, drives into town and parks and stays. The snowy town is filling up with a procession of trucks of all shapes and sizes, including a snowplow, a crane, a digger, a semitrailer transporting the town’s majestic Christmas tree, and even a flatbed carrying Santa’s sleigh. All in all, twenty trucks roll in full of sparkle and anticipation, ready to set up the holiday festivities. But when the star being hoisted to the top of the Christmas tree wobbles and crashes to the ground, what could possibly be used to replace it? Thankfully, a pair of siblings scan the scene and come up with the perfect solution. Author Mark Lee and illustrator Kurt Cyrus team up again for a buoyant story delivering satisfying rhymes, holiday spirit, and most importantly, twenty trucks for counting.

By September 1944, Allied forces had broken out from the Normandy beachheads, liberated Paris, and found themselves poised on the German border. As this offensive gained momentum, Patton and Montgomery, hoping to exploit the enemy's temporary weakness in the West, concocted their own alternatives to Eisenhower's broad front strategy. Each proposed a single thrust aimed directly into the German heartland, designed to bring the troops home by Christmas. This study examines this so-called broad front-single thrust controversy and concludes that the idea of early victory was wishful thinking--a product of the erroneous and dangerous assumption that the Nazi regime was already tottering on the brink of collapse. Precisely because of its lightning pace, the Allied advance resulted in severe logistical problems, limiting Patton's proposed operation to only ten combat divisions, while Montgomery's closer proximity to the coast might have allowed for as many as sixteen. But it should have been obvious that either thrust faced certain destruction against the 250 divisions still fielded by the Wehrmacht on all fronts in September. In light of this substantial German military capacity, despite serious losses and strategic setbacks, the single thrust could not have been a decisive war-ending maneuver. In fact, Andidora argues, it could not even have provided for its own security against the forces that would have coalesced against it. Rather than unnecessarily prolonging the war, as some have argued, Eisenhower's decision to stay the strategic course probably averted a military disaster.

Twenty-five short stories.

In the near future the United States and Canada get into war with the Soviet Union and Chinese People's Republic. Both sides' atomic weapons are ineffective as surface-to-air missiles shoot down any bombers or guided missiles, so ground forces have done most of the fighting. The Communist nations—whose armies greatly outnumber the North Americans—conquered Western Europe, invaded South America, and are moving toward Texas. The United States eventually fall to the invader, and Billy Justin, commercial artist and Korean War veteran, joins a conspiracy to finish building a satellite that can help Americans win the war. At Washington Justin receives instructions from the nationwide resistance movement for an attack planned for Christmas Eve on Chiunga Center to liberate the satellite. Despite the Soviets' arrest and torture of a local farmer, they are ignorant of what "Christmas Eve", a mild oath they have heard sworn by various citizens, means until the battle begins.

Meet all the engines, characters big and small, in this collection of all six stories from The Engine Series. Puff along with engines: Little Titch, Gideon, Toc Toc, Rust Bucket, Sally Steamy and not forgetting, Minnie Millie the engine lookerafterer.