If I Built a Car
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the The Why-Askers stage.
Why it fits The Why-Askers (for preschoolers whose every page sparks a question)
Jack designs a dream car with a pool, a snack bar, and autopilot. Invention framed as pure joy, in Seussian bounce. The gateway to a lifetime of 'if I built...' thinking.
What makes it special
Van Dusen bottles pure invention energy: Jack's car has a pool, a snack bar, and zero regard for feasibility. The retro-futurist gouache gleams like a 1950s ad from a better timeline. It gives engineering the emotional register of a daydream — which is where all real engineering starts.
About Chris Van Dusen
Chris Van Dusen paints gleaming, retro-futurist gouache worlds from his home in Maine — the If I Built... series is a perennial STEM-classroom favorite, and his Mercy Watson illustrations define that series' joy.
A longtime magazine illustrator, Van Dusen wrote his first book after a decade of drawing other people's ideas; the If I Built books channel the vehicle daydreams he sketched constantly as a boy.
Also by this author: If I Built a House · If I Built a School · The Circus Ship
More from “What If and Why Not”
This book is part of The Best Books for Preschoolers: 30 Teacher Picks (The Why-Askers) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.