Chug Chug! Woooooo! Trains by Charles Reasoner

ALL ABOARD!

Although the boarding call of the passenger train conductor is no longer heard in the land, trains are still an important form of transportation, and as part of his series, Big Busy Machines, Charles Reasoner's Trains! (Big Busy Machines) (Rourke/Little Birdie Books) is a jolly introduction for the youngest book lovers to the wide world of railroading.

Reasoner opens with a view of the station, with ticket windows and schedules of Arrivals and Departure in full sight of the waiting passengers on the platform as the train pulls in.

"TOOT! TOOT!"

An old-fashioned steam engine complete with drivers and smokestack pulls out and heads through the city, across a railroad bridge over the bay with a cheery "toot" to its comrade sight-seeing boat cruising below, and heads out into the countryside where it rolls through hill and dale, field and forest, until, with one last mountain to climb, the little engine heads for home at the station, weary but still smiling.

WOO! WOO!

With the cheery retro look of a Little Golden Book, but with sturdy washable board book cover and pages, this entry in Reasoner's set for young big machines fans makes a good first book about trains and ground transport and a valuable preparation for an upcoming train ride. For a bit more about the magic of train trips, share this one with George Ella Lyons' Trains Run! (Atheneum, 2018) (see review here) or Sherri Duskey Rinker's lovely Steam Train, Dream Train (Easy Reader Books, Reading Books for Children, 2013) (review here).

Don't You Want to Ride? Trains Run! by George Ella Lyon

Steam engine,
gas engine,
electric engine, too.

Chooka-chooka! Vroom zoom!
Hssss! Whoo-oo-whoo!

The streamlined sheer power of the engine, the sinuous string of varied cars, the rhythm of the rails, the thrill of moving swiftly through the landscape, the fun of going somewhere else--everything that trains do and all they mean to travelers is included, in George Ella and Ben Lyon's Trains Run! (Atheneum Books, 2018).

And assisted by the powerful retro-styled illustrations of artist Mick Wiggins, Lyon's strong and rhythmic quatrains summon up the sights and sounds and sensations of the train.

Can a train climb a mountain?
I think I can!!

Slow it goes up the slope,
fast across the bridge--
a long strong trestle
that links the ridge to ridge.

"Don't you want to ride?" All aboard! Who wouldn't want to ride those silver rails, to see those sights, to feel that power beneath you, taking you somewhere new, somewhere special? George Ella Lyon's latest in her series captures the folklore, the mystique, the promise of traveling by train. There are many great literary accounts of trains, going back to Emily Dickinson's "I Like to See It Lap the Miles," and Watty Piper's classic The Little Engine That Could (Original Classic Edition), and notable children's writer George Ella Lyon and son Benn Lyon have given us a worthy new one to make our senses ring with the rails. Other books in this series are Boats Float! (Richard Jackson Book), and Planes Fly!, and Trucks Roll! (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover))