Tow-truck Pluck

Pluck has a little red tow truck. He drives it all over town looking for a place to live. Then Dolly the pigeon tells him that the tower of the Pill Building is empty. In the Pill Building, Pluck meets Mr. Penn and Zaza the cockroach.

Pluck makes lots more friends and solves all kinds of problems. But the biggest problem is Dove Grove. It used to be a garden with tall trees, but it has been neglected and gone wild. Grown-ups never go there, but the kids from the Pill Building love playing there. But now the Park Superintendent has decided to chop down the trees to make a paved square. Pluck and his friends try to save Dove Grove. But first he has to rescue Longmount from the canal.

Annie M.G. Schmidt (1911-95) was regarded as the Queen of Dutch Children's Literature and her books have been an essential part of every Dutch childhood for the last fifty years. She trained as a librarian but burst onto the literary scene whenthe newspaper she was working for discovered her gift for children's verse.. Having won numerous awards during her lifetime, including the1989 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Schmidt is now included in the Canon of Dutch History taught to all Dutch schoolchildren, alongside Spinoza, Anne Frank and Vincent van Gogh.

David Colmer has won several international awards for his translations of Dutch and Flemish novels, poetry and children's books. He has translated much of Annie M.G. Schmidt's work.