Tonka Books in Order

This reading order guide provides the complete list of Tonka books in order, from the very first to the latest, so you won’t miss anything!

About the Tonka Series

Children get really, really excited when a large truck goes past – the sort of thing that makes them stop whatever they’re doing and look out of the window. The Tonka books by Ann M. Martin understand this – and that’s, in truth, the reason they’re so effective.

The stories aren’t set in invented worlds or in fantasy, but in normal streets, fire stations, and on building sites – places children regularly travel through and are curious about. This is what makes them unlike many other children’s books: there’s no dragon, no enchanted kingdom, simply real locations and real vehicles which children are already interested in, anyway.

Tonka Fire Truck to the Rescue is a suitable illustration of this. Eric and Amanda are normal children who come across a fire engine dealing with an emergency in their area, and then are permitted to go to the fire station and learn how everything functions. For many children, this is pretty much the best thing that could occur, and the book successfully portrays that enthusiasm without making it a tedious safety lesson.

Tonka: Building the New School does the same thing, but with construction. A site manager takes Emma and Ben around a whole building site, and explains to them what each machine does – bulldozer, tipper truck, concrete mixer, and everything else. What’s good is that the machines aren’t merely attractive to view, but are actually creating something which the entire locality is going to make use of; this is a pleasant detail which children understand more often than people imagine.

The complete series has this talent for getting children to consider ordinary things in a different light. That loud building site on the corner? It’s actually something being made. That fire station they pass each day? People are inside, practicing and working and prepared to assist. These books discreetly bring all this to notice without being didactic – and that is, truthfully, more difficult to achieve than it appears.

Children who are keen on trucks will enjoy this series from the beginning. However, even children who aren’t so interested in vehicles generally become involved because the stories seem genuine – and that is what makes them want to have it read to them, repeatedly.