Riding the Rails: Chugga Chugga Choo Choo by Kevin Lowe

SUN'S UP. MORNING'S HERE! 

UP AND AT 'EM, ENGINEER!

CHUGGA CHUGGA CHOO CHOO!

WHISTLE BLOWS. 

WHOOOOOOOOO! WHOOOOOOOOO!

A Teddy bear and all the toys wave to the engineer and boy as the train as a clown oversees the loading of boxcars and the choo choo pulls out of the station. The old-fashioned locomotive, drivers driving, begin the journey, pulling a coal car, freight cars, and a red caboose. The train winds through the room under a chair and over its rocker as train lovers, a man and boy, a cowboy on horseback, and a barking dog watch it pass. Through the Box Mountains and wooden-blocks pass the little train goes. And then...

INTO THE TUNNELS, UNDERGROUND.

SEE THE DARKNESS, HEAR THE SOUND! WHOOOOOOOOOO!

Then the train crosses the long bridge over the river, and not far ahead is their destination--the city. A dog walker waves to the boy and the engineer as the train slows down for the station, where strong workers wait to unload the freight--a box of penguins and a box of dog bones come off first as the boxcars grow empty.  And then, down goes the sun.

THE JOB IS DONE!

And into the roundhouse the engine, coal car, freightcars, and caboose all head.

It getting dark and it's time for bed, in Kevin Lowe's vintage choo choo story, Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo (Disney Hyperion). With jolly rhymes and the rhythm of the rails, this old-fashioned little train story takes young children gradually and gently toward bedtime, as Daniel Kirk's illustrations mix rounded Playskool-type figures and geometric shapes in soft, muted pastels. Kirk is also the noted illustrator of the popular Library Mouse series, Ten Things I Love About You, and his 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. (See reviews here.)

King of Wheels! Trucker and Train by Hannah Stark

TRUCKER LOVED TO RULE THE ROAD.

He loves to roar down the road. He loves to see the little vehicles--mopeds, compact cars, and the petite pick-ups scurry to get out of his lane.

HONNNK! goes his big klaxen, clearing the way for his big wheels to roll past them all.

But then, cresting the hill, Trucker sees something that makes even him take notice. WOOOOOOO! WHOOOOOO!

What's that? Trucker hits the gas and speeds up. It's Train!

TRUCKER GAWKED AT THE 2... 4.... 7... 8... 10 CARS PULLED BY TRAIN'S BIG BLACK ENGINE.

Train is fast, and his whistle is louder than Trucker's horn! There's a crossing ahead. Trucker has to brake, and so do the mo-peds, cars, and little pick-ups. Trucker is rumbling and grumbling.

WHY ARE WE THE ONES STOPPING?

Trucker roars off, heading up the mountain at full throttle, but as Train zooms by, Trucker's engine is forced to slow down on the steep slope. He grows angry as even the mo-peds pass him on the grade, and he can't wait to outrun them and beat Train all on the way down the mountain. But when he reaches the peak, he spots something far ahead that makes even his loud klaxen quail!

A BROKEN-OFF GATE!

WHAT IF NO ONE STOPS?

It's a real race now, not to win, but to get to the crossing and block the tracks to save the other little vehicles, in Hannah Stark's latest, Trucker and Train (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019). Size and speed are useful in more than one way, and Trucker is everyone's hero. Stark's little parable of power is portrayed perfectly by Bob Kolar's simple geometrically-shaped rivals, set against bright white pages, each with its own job to do and his own way to do it. As Kirkus Reviews puts it, "Grab your CBs and hold onto your whistle. In this battle of truck vs. train, the true winners are the readers."

For more pun-filled power struggles, pair this one with Chris Barton's comic tale of those toy-box titans, Shark vs. Train (see review here).

Take the Night Train: Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld

THROUGH THE DARKNESS, CLICKETY CLACK,
COMING CLOSER, DOWN THE TRACK,

HOLD YOUR BREATH SO YOU CAN HEAR.
HUFFING, CHUFFING, DRAWING NEAR.

Rolling into the Night Falls station, a little steam train chugs to a stop just as the sky begins to darken. It is time to take on a load, and the railway crew rolls open the boxcar doors and begins their work.

Rabbits bound up the ramp on pogo sticks, a troupe of monkeys trundle monkey bars and juggle skate boards aboard, A camel carrying blocks and erector sets and kites and bikes comes behind, and a polar bear schleps a giant ice cream sundae into the refrigerator car, where the penguin has already positioned blocks of ice. And then the elephants step up, their trunks at the ready, to squirt some liquid cargo into the tank cars.

TANKERS LINING UP IN A ROW
ARE GETTING FILLED WITH PAINTS TO GO.

One by one all the specialized freight cars get loaded--the autorack with race cars, the gondola cars with sandbox sand, the well cars with dinos--and then it's time for the real business of this night train, the flatbed cars filled with... well, comfy beds for the weary railway crew. And as the caboose clacks by, this train is ready for its real journey:

THE FREIGHT AND CREW ARE TUCKED AWAY.
THE NEXT STOP... ANOTHER DAY.

Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld are the capable creator crew of this night train whose manifest is a dreamland delivery. Rinker and Lichtenheld, whose best-selling debut, Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site (see my review here), has pretty much owned the bedtime book business since its publication, have rolled out another winner aboard their delightfully designed latest, Steam Train, Dream Train (Chronicle Books, 2013).

Rinker's cozy couplets chug along just right for her preschool audience, and Lichtenheld's lovely illustrations make good use of his twilight palette, loaded with rich deep blues, lavenders, and violets, showing comfy animal characters and a kid-pleasing cargo that recall Watty Piper's classic The Little Engine That Could. But though their brand-new best-selling tale begins with a merry huff and puff, a hustle and bustle, this nighttime train is surely bound for bedtime and and the land of sweet dreams.

Loaded and Railroaded: All Aboard the Dinotrain by Deb Lund and HowardFine

"FAREWELL!" THE DINOFAMILIES CRY.
WITH CHEERS, THE DINOS WAVE GOOD-BYE,
ADVENTURES WAIT JUST DOWN THE TRACK.
"WE'RE OFF!" THEY SAY. "BUT WE'LL BE BACK!"

As clearly promised in the previous dino-adventure, Dinosailors board book Houghton Mifflin, 2011), the spirited saurians are off for another trip--this time by train. The motley crew, striped railroad caps and overalls and all, clamber atop the railroad cars and chug away. With tons and tons of dinos aboard, their train is clearly stressed. no express. In fact, as they begin their climb up into the beckoning snow-capped mountains, the dino-crew find that they have to provide a bit of motive muscle to the mix.

"WE THINK WE CAN!" THEY DINOSAY.
"OUR DINOMIGHT WILL SAVE THE DAY."

But even dino-motivation can't quite come up with the motion until they dino-download some dinofreight. At last they make the peak. Now they're rolling!

THEY DINOSCREAM AND SQUEAL,"YIPPEE!"
AND WAVE THEIR DINOARMS WITH GLEE.

But the dinoglee is short-lived. Careening down the other side of the mountain, they are greeted by a frightful dinosight!

"OH,NO!" THE DINOBRAKEMEN SHOUT!
"THE TRAIN WON'T STOP. THE TRESTLE'S OUT!"

Yep, it's another dino-disaster! On sea or land, it seems the travellin' saurians are bound to wind up soggy. As the train makes the hurdle over the broken bridge, its crew dinorockets off the bridge, to land--where else? in the dino-drink again!

"HOW CAN IT BE?
WE THOUGHT THIS TRIP WAS WATER-FREE!"

The dinos drag themselves back home, damp and discouraged. But hope springs eternal in the prehistoric heart....

"WE'LL NEVER TAKE ANOTHER TRAIN...
BUT HOW ABOUT... A DINOPLANE?"

Howard Fine's glowing gouache and watercolor illustrations, filled with up-to-date dino morphology and markings, fill the pages with dino delight in this forthcoming new board book edition of Deb Lund's jolly rhyming All Aboard the Dinotrain board book (Houghton Mifflin, 2011). And true to the form of the previous book, barring an asteroid strike in dinoland, these dinotrippers will be taking flight for their next transportation tale.

What IF? On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells

Across from me in his seat, Dutch was scanning the paper again. He had it open to the Christmas Eve massacre story. Then it came to me. I glanced leftward to the two ladies in the seats beside us. They were deep in face-to-face conversation. The last time I saw them, they had been thumb-size and made of tin. So had Dutch. He was the metal man with the tin glasses reading his newspaper. And I was the tin boy on the opposite seat, riding around and around forever, staring out the window of the Golden State streamliner at another great big Oscar who might, this very minute, be peering in at me.

I had jumped onto a toy train and escaped into some kind of time and space neverland.

Rosemary Wells, famed for her Max & Ruby toddler tales, has here herself made a huge jump into another literary genre altogether--the young adult time travel fantasy, with great success.

It's 1931. Oscar and his widowed father live happily enough in their little house in Cairo, Illinois, their retreat from fifth-grade arithmetic and trying to sell John Deere tractors to hard-pressed farmers. Oscar and his dad share a love for their elaborate Lionel train layout in the basement and spend most nights down there together. But it all ends when his dad loses his job and their house and is forced to sell their beloved Lionel trains to town banker, Mr. Pettishanks. Oscar is reluctantly taken in by his stoic, penurious Aunt Carmen, who ekes out her living teaching piano and declamation to the town's richest children, while his father tries to find a new life for them in California.

There is no joy in Aunt Carmen's niggardly rules and lima bean and canned cod-cheek casseroles, and Oscar finds brief relief in a chance meeting with Mr. Applegate, a vagrant ex-teacher who secretly coaches him in math, tells him about Einstein's theory of time, and teaches him his private code for memorizing Kipling's "If," a skill which happens to endear him to Mr. Pettishanks, who is duly moved to allow Oscar occasional visits to his former trains on display downtown in the bank.

There after hours on Christmas Eve, the now watchman Mr. Applegate lets Oscar in to run the trains, and when two robbers force their way in and fire their guns at them, Oscar follows Mr. Applegate's last words, "Jump, Oscar!" and leaps into the train layout. When he comes to his senses, he finds himself amazingly inside the Lionel scene, now full-sized and as real as he is, with the train to Chicago just pulling into the station. Still fearful, Oscar bolts onto the train and into a time travel adventures which takes him to Los Angeles in 1941, back east to New York City before the Crash in 1926, and eventually back to his own time with his life forever changed.

Along the way Wells has her resilient eleven-year-old hero meet up with many celebrities of that time and future times, including Ronald Reagan, as the cheerful recent college graduate "Dutch" who travels with him to Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock, intrigued by the bank robbery mystery, and Joan Crawford, whose own elaborate train layout helps Oscar, now 21 and reunited with his older (and balder) father, escape a team of draft-dodger hunters by jumping onto a train to the New York City of 1926.

On that train is a willful ten-year-old runaway rich girl, Claire, who takes Oscar, now six years old, back to her wealthy life with her stockbroker father, where the young Oscar tries to warn a meeting of financiers--including Joseph Kennedy, Sr., accompanied by his young son Jack--of the coming stock market collapse three years in the future. And when Claire's father decides to pack Oscar off to an orphanage, Oscar jumps once more, this time into Claire's train layout which takes him back toward Cairo, again eleven years old but this time with knowledge that will enable him and his father (now with his youthful full head of hair temporarily restored) to have a new and better life together.

It's an absorbing read, with plenty of adventure and a delightful mix of history thrown in, in a real change of pace for the versatile Wells in her latest, On the Blue Comet, 2010. Her publisher, Candlewick Press, has gone all out in this beautiful edition, complete with creamy page stock and charmingly nostalgic, absolutely gorgeous illustrations by the prodigiously talented Bagram Iboutalline who adds much to a tale in which Lionel trains become the means and metaphor for Einstein-inspired time travel.

As School Library Journal says, "The sheer beauty of this winning book will attract many readers; the magic of the story and its likable protagonist will hook them."