A fun and useful educational tool for preschoolers, particularly beginning readers. (Board book. 4-6)
There’s so much to see on the airport train.
One of the passengers on the airport train has lost her ticket! In this lift-the-flap concertina book, readers travel from car to car of the aforementioned train, searching for both the missing ticket and for other objects hidden within the pictures. Each illustration requires a different preschool skill, including recognizing shapes, counting, and matching. The images feature diverse humans and quirky creatures, not to mention skillfully drawn, child-friendly objects such as instruments and balls. The clean design separates the text from the illustrations, which are busy and teeming with life. Once they have completed the activities within the train cars, readers can flip to the backs of the pages to see what passengers are viewing out of the windows and to do more counting and identification. The pages of the book pull out into a full train, and it lacks any kind of narrative throughline, making it unwieldy for group read-alouds. It is, however, a wonderful option for one-on-one learning sessions and for children who are independent enough to manipulate the pages on their own—although it should be noted that the design, while clever, can be confusing and, at times, frustrating for the youngest readers.
A fun and useful educational tool for preschoolers, particularly beginning readers. (Board book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3678-0
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wormell (Blue Rabbit and the Runaway Wheel, see above) seamlessly blends landscape and playscape in this tale of a wonderfully catastrophic train wreck. As if it’s not bad enough that blubbery Mrs. Walrus, Mr. Bear, and Mrs. Elephant forcibly wedge themselves into the train’s tiny cars for a shopping trip into town, on their return they’re carrying 600 sardines, 15 loaves of bread, pots of honey, and a mountain of fresh fruit. “ ‘It’s just a matter of balance,’ ” Mrs. Elephant cheerfully assures the worried conductor. Indeed it is—until a bee crawls up Mrs. Elephant’s trunk, prompting a monumental sneeze. Groceries are scattered everywhere. What to do? Invite everyone to a picnic! Rather than his usual polychrome woodcuts, Wormell creates soft-edged, colored-pencil drawings here for a “younger,” softer look, depicting a simply carved wooden train sturdily pulling three hilariously overloaded cars. Afterward, willing trunks and flippers reset the tumbled cars onto their tracks, and off the train chugs, leaving the bloated picnickers strewn about like beached whales. Ending on a peaceful, satiated note, this explosive episode makes a first-rate entry in the annals of picture-book sneezes. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83986-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A glory ride for young car, truck, train, bus and trolley devotees.
In a visual feast for fans of wheeled vehicles large and small, Biggs presents a series of high-density street scenes done in an amiably rumpled cartoon style.
Driving in from the ’burbs to a generic metropolis, a lad and his dad gloss each big, double-page spread—“ ‘Do trucks work the same way as cars?’ / ‘Many of them do. Trucks also have jobs, like cars’ ”—as they glide through heavy traffic, past a construction site and under an elevated highway. They wait for fleets of bikes and motorcycles to pass and park at last near a train station to pick up Mom. Along with sparely labeled close-up or cutaway views of a car, a bicycle, a big truck, a subway station, an RV and other specimens, the author sets up the family reunion at the end with a giant double-gatefold aerial view of an entire neighborhood packed with traffic, pedestrians, local businesses and signs, each one individually distinct. Jokey side conversations (one firefighter tells another, "There's no fire. It's just a cat"; his companion asks, "Should we get some milk?") play off more serious and informative dialogue. A diagram of a car is accompanied by a disquisition on the relationship between a car battery and the motor, as well as the fact that "[a]n electric car uses batteries and electric motor. No gas!"
A glory ride for young car, truck, train, bus and trolley devotees. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-195809-0
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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