Most families groan when orange cones and blinking lights indicate construction detours.
Not Lori Alexander’s family.
Alexander, the 42-year-old mother of two, wrote the new picture book “Backhoe Joe” because of her son Max’s love for construction.
The family often pulled over to watch the workers and trucks.
“Sometimes, if there is a fenced-off area, you can stand and feel the ground rumble and smell the smell of dug up dirt,” Alexander says.
“Backhoe Joe” veers from the conventional construction picture book when a young boy tries to adopt a stray backhoe that acts like as rambunctious puppy.
In the book, “the backhoe digs in the garbage and leaks on the driveway and buries its orange construction cone in the flower bed instead of a bone,” she says.
Published in September by HarperCollins Publishers, the story also supports themes such as friendship and responsibility while building in humor and a surprise ending.
Alexander began working on the book in spurts about five years ago, bouncing ideas back and forth with Max, who is now 9.
“We started brainstorming, ‘What would you do with a backhoe?’” Alexander says. “I would use it for dog poop, and he would use it for Legos and cleaning his room, and it was fun.”
Alexander grew up enjoying English classes and reading but never considered writing. That changed when she began reading with her son and daughter, 8-year-old Nora. Bedtime stories, trips to the library on hot, summer days and picture books where “every page is a painting” piqued her interest. Writing allows her to stay home with her children.
“The kids are big readers,” she says. “They have sagging book cases, and we go to the library all the time. They carry books to and from school just to have them, and they have heavy backpacks.”
Online, she discovered kindred spirits who debunked her belief that the creators of children’s books also illustrate. As Alexander worked through drafts of her book, critique partners found on the Internet tweaked and tuned her story.
For her children, “Backhoe Joe” did not come to life until UK-based artist Craig Cameron added the illustrations. Alexander has a sequel in the works if sales are steady.
Since the publication of the book, Alexander has made the rounds to classrooms in her children’s school, reading her book and running writing workshops on ideas, revisions and “sloppy copies.”
“I want to encourage them to keep writing and like it and know that it’s never right the first time,” she says.
Even though Max no longer devotes all of his affection to construction trucks — there are, after all, superheroes, “Star Wars” and battles to explore — Alexander wrote the book for her children and included their names in the book’s dedication.
It doesn’t hurt that she added a bit of humor.
“I like a good, funny book,” Alexander says. “I like to hear my kids giggle and laugh.”
