Trains: Steaming! Pulling! Huffing!

Trains: Steaming! Pulling! Huffing!

From School Library JournalPreSchool-Grade 1-This book introduces every possible kind of train through a rollicking rhyme: Silver trains. Black trains./Speeding-down-the-track trains./Passenger trains. Freight trains./Crossing-every-state trains. The text will have readers building up steam and momentum until the very last page, when the trains and children can both rest. Unfortunately, the illustrations combine drawings, clip art, etchings, and maps, and they are too busy. Busy can be good, but with the small size of this book and its potential as a great read-aloud, the pictures are extremely distracting. On one spread, the workers are named, but the illustrations of them below the text do not line up, and small labels next to the figures indicate their jobs. It also seems as though the book were squeezed as much as possible in order to fit into 32 pages and uses every last inch of space. Stick with Michael Rex's My Freight Train (Holt, 2002) or Philemon Sturgess's I Love Trains! (HarperCollins, 2001).-Genevieve Gallagher, Murray Elementary School, Charlottesville, VACopyright