Train Books for Children Mini-Reviews

These are reviews of the train books we checked out of the library for our unit study on trains. In addition to this reading, I did a simple fingerplay from a '60s-era book for teachers called Rhymes for Fingers and Flannelboards, we visited Travel Town in Griffith Park and we visited our city's real, live train station. Other books we read that aren't reviewed here are Freight Train by Donald Crews, The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper and That's Not My Train from the popular touch-and-feel series.

WINNERS
Train Song, Diane Siebert (author), Mike Wimmer (illustrator): The text is an image-heavy poem that was originally published in Cricket magazine in the early '80s, the paintings are a mix of locations and scenes that almost seem like a movie montage, but the total effect is tremendously evocative and educational. This was one of our favorite books; it was right at J's level and we both dug it.

Trains: Steaming! Pulling! Huffing!, Patricia Hubbell (author), Megan Halsey, Sean Addy (illustrators): Great rollicking verse, great funny collage images, great book.

William and the Night Train, Mij Kelly (author), Alison Jay (illustrator): This is the one train book I'd most like to eventually add in our personal collection. Wide-awake William learns that everyone sleeps on the train to tomorrow. Beautiful sleepytime verse, dense pictures that will grow with the kids, altogether a lovely bed time book.

Two Little Trains, Margaret Wise Brown (author), Leo Dillon, Diane Dillon (illustrators): This was far and away my fave of the imaginary toy trains books. "Two little trains went West," but one is a real streamliner crossing the country, one is a boy's train climbing stair mountains instead of the Rocky Mountains, and so forth. Lovely verse, lovely spare pictures.

OK

Trains, Byron Barton (author, illustrator): Clean, simple and straightforward. All of these Byron Barton transportation books are great for guys J's age, and even younger, I'd think.

Engine, Engine, Number Nine, Stephanie Calmenson (author), Paul Meisel (illustrator): Train books naturally lend themselves to great rhythms and this was just a fun wacky long rhyming poem.

Puff-Puff, Chugga-Chugga, Christopher Wormell (author, illustrator): Entertaining-enough story and cute pastel illustrations, but this one just made me uncomfortable because it's about how the little engineer thinks his obese passengers Mr. Elephant, Mrs. Bear and Mrs. Walrus are too fat to be on his train safely!

DUDS

Choo Choo: The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away, Virginia Lee Burton (author, illustrator): Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel is one of my favorite books of all time (not just of children's books, of all books!), but this was a disappointment. Choo Choo is an irresponsible train engine who wants to live it up, and the telling of this tale is just too routine to be exciting. The biggest problem, however, is the incredibly muddy images, which are rendered in black charcoal, making them too hard to see and just no fun.


All Aboard! A True Train Story, Susan Kuklin (author, photographer): Photographic storybook about a still-exant steam train that operates in Colorado. This had the best age-level-appropriate fact-section in the back (the code of train whistles, how steam engines and railroad tracks work), but the story and pictures were just dull.

Chugga-Chugga, Choo-Choo, Kevin Lewis (author), Daniel Kirk (illustrator): Totally unremarkable toys-come-to-life train book.

Steam, Smoke and Steel: Back in Time with Trains, Patrick O'Brien (author, illustrator): This one failed through no fault of the book, it was just way about J's age level. Probably better for an eight-year-old.

SAVE FOR LATER

John Henry, Julius Lester (author), Jerry Pinkney (illustrator): I've always loved the story of John Henry and this version made me cry like a baby, but Jackson wasn't having it. We'll try again in a couple years while exploring American folklore in more depth. We'll also save Casey Jones for then. I found a perfectly tolerable Casey Jones book at our branch library, but came to realize the story is mostly famous because of the folk song (and the story is a downer anyway--dude dies in a train crash!), so I just put together a YouTube playlist for the kid focusing on the song and that was plenty of exposure/entertainment for now.

Train Week So Far...

We got a train book from the library called Engine Engine Number Nine which eventually led me down the Internet rabbit hole to the above two videos. I post them here for your edification and enjoyment; Jackson was unimpressed/confounded by both of these videos but hey, that's his loss, man. (He really likes Copacabana though. Hee.)

Meanwhile, our train books so far seem to have amazing vocabulary. I think I'm going to go through them at naptime tomorrow and do that Post-It note thing in hopes of honing in on a few particularly cool words. Destination? Streamlined?

Also, I've discovered that I need a wall map. There's just no explaining Abilene, Texas on a globe.

China Week Wrap-Up

Jackson knows where China is now. It's on the blue thing that spins, aka the globe. Heh.

And he knows what 42 looks like, because he was very interested in Ping's 42 cousins, so we counted out 42 links every day and hooked them together into a long, fun chain. He also learned about "swooping" and "diving" from Ping, and he heard the song "Row Row Row Your Boat" every day, in conjunction with "the jerk, jerk, jerk" of the oars. He learned that boats can have wise eyes. He knows that ducks dive for fish, and that it's uproariously funny when mama makes sounds like the boat boy or Ping's master, who says "La-la-la-lei."


The Story About Ping is the longest book he's ever let me read him, and it's fairly complicated--there's at least four separate "acts"--but he sat through it every time, so long as his tray was full of food. This was a great experience because it make me certain that Jackson's attention span is expanding and that we can continue stretching it further. He didn't take to either the fingerplay or the longer stories, but I might try to slip in Tikki Tikki Tembo (another quasi-Chinese childhood favorite of mine) and see what he thinks. Plus, we need a reason to stretch out "China week" a little longer: I still owe him a bowl of wonton soup, and we haven't even seen grandma and grandpa's China slide show yet.

In other news, Jackson starred blankly at the Montessori-style sized-cup nesting activity for the first three days we did it, and then on day four, he just reached out, nested them himself and then looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to increase the level of difficulty. I was overjoyed, because he was genuinely befuddled at first, and then, after three days of demonstration and (then a couple of days off when we were camping), it clicked and he got it. I've seen book-related learning take place, but this was my first spatial-relations lesson that had a real effect and it was so cool. Definitely continuing with these. I think next we'll do "sorting silverware" since Jackson loves playing in the dishwasher anyway and because I have about 25 McDonald's fork-and-knife packets that I don't have anything else to do with.

I don't know what theme week to do next, mostly because I'm paralyzed by the possibilities. Trains? The five senses? Art? I also want to do a billion craft projects, like making Play-Doh and fingerpainting and ironing autumn leaves between wax-paper sheets and so forth. There is so so much to learn and do at this age, not to mention that there are so many parks to visit, adventures to have, and grandparents to socialize with. I'm pretty sure just hanging out and doing stuff and reading sometimes is an overabundance of stimulation, but you wanna do as much as you can, right?

China Theme Week

Grandma and grandpa are visiting China, so this week is China week! Not all activities are directly related to China, but here is the plan.

Geography: First we'll find China on a globe, and then I'll attempt to explain the concept of globes/planets. I might also try explain that panda bears live in China. We're big on bears around here.

Read-Alouds: So far the plan is five mornings of (a) The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack, illustrated by Kurt Wiese and (b) a fingerplay called Chinese Fan. On days when he seems to have the patience, I'm thinking of a gentle introduction of "Dream of the Butterfly" from Chinese Children's Favorite Stories, and possibly a look through You Can Write Chinese by Kurt Wiese. (Jackson likes to find pens and wave them around while saying "Writing! Writing!")

Food: We may live to regret this one, but I think it's time to finally visit the very "dive-y" Chinese restaurant near our house to see what their heavily advertised wonton soup is all about.


Montessori-Style Concept Introduction: I'm finally getting myself together to do some of the suggested activities from Bright from the Start! I have my "pay attention" placemat all ready, and I pulled out three measuring cups (2 C, 3/4 C, 1/8 C) I can use to illustrate the concepts of large, medium and small. I'll introduce the cups and the words once a day for five days, let him try to nest them, and see where we end up by Friday.

Also on the Docket: (1) Mama needs to work out (and/or wants to collect some wild fennel seeds for her garden), so I'm hoping to find some time to hike the Westchester Bluffs Fire Road again. (2) We need to clean up the house, which looks like a hurricane rolled through it! (3) Tuesday is our first day on our scheduled "tour of exotic faraway parks." Wish us luck.

Judaism Week Recap

Overall, I think Judaism Week was a success, but I never got around either to the glitter bottle or the challah. Jackson loved the apples and honey, he learned what a candle is (as mentioned in one of our topical poems and then demonstrated in real life), he now knows a shofar is a horn (which comes from a goat or a sheep), and he enjoyed a little Barbra. I ended up not liking the Rosh Hashanah story from Ten Holiday Jewish Children's Stories (it was fine, just not quite age-appropriate and too metaphorical), so I gave up reading it after three days; I wish I'd looked a bit further afield. Ideally I can find a copy of Kveller's recommended Apples and Honey before next year. The best resource I had on hand was definitely Jane Yolen's Milk and Honey, which was both appropriate, informative and enjoyable.

I'm not sure J will remember "Shana" (his word for Rosh Hashanah) come next fall, but I think he did learn something, and it was a nice, pleasant week.

Day 2 of Judaism Week

I remembered that life isn't all about books about the same time I saw the Avinu Malkeinu mentioned in my Rosh Hashanah reading. I looked up Avinu Melkeinu on the Interwebs, and Jackson seemed to really enjoy video of Barbra Streisand's version of the song/prayer. He calls Rosh Hashanah "Shanna" and points at our Judiasm books when we talk about it. He also understands that the shofar is a horn and that horns come from sheep and goats, and we learned what candles are, and how the sulfur from matches can tickle one's nose. (He kept saying "Nose? Nose?" until I lit another match.) This unit study stuff is actually all it's cracked up to be. Who knew?



In other news, the kiddo had a blast helping me plant some new stuff in a corner of the yard. He picked out some shelling pea seeds from our seed box (he liked the rattling sound they made inside the packet), and they were just the right size for him to actually grasp and drop in the little holes. He loved his peas and when they spilled he picked up every single one and put it back in the "packet! packet!" I finally had to trade him a biscuit for the pea seeds to get them back.

Pictures of our new tree and new patch of dirt forthcoming!

Theme Week: Fall

I feel so schoolteachery this week! I've collected a fair number of materials that can be used for "curriculum" planning, and somehow this week I pieced together a quasi-educational theme (fall/autumn) and I pulled together stuff from more than one source and I'm using them with Jackson. Basically, it's a poem, a fingerplay, a read-aloud, and two field trips, all on the theme of fall. We'll do the read-alouds every day this week and slot in whatever else we can as it fits.

(1) Morning: Reading aloud of two poems from page 16 of my new book-friend, The Illustrated Treasury of Poetry for Children (1970) ed. by David Ross: "September" by Helen Hunt Jackson and "Autumn" by Emily Dickinson.

(2) Lunchtime: A Book of Seasons (1976) by Alice and Martin Provensen, which is an OOP "Random House Pictureback" that preceded (and probably inspired) the similarly seasonal The Year at Maple Hill Farm by two years.

(3) Evening: "Three Little Oak Leaves" from an outstanding educational relic called Rhymes for Fingers and Flannelboards (1960). When I get a chance I'll talk more about this book, but in the meantime, here's my slightly revised rhyme, which I've been doing with ASL signs instead of the suggested "fingerplays" which would be great for a class of second-graders but are a little silly for just me and my toddler:

Three Little Oak Leaves


Three little oak leaves, red, brown and gold,
Were happy, happy, happy when the wind turned cold


The first one said, "I'll be a coat for an elf,
He'll be able to warm his little self"


The second one said, "I'll be a home for a bug
So he will be cozy-dozy and snug"


The third one said, "To a tiny seed I'll be
A blanket until the first day of spring"


Three little oak leaves, red, brown and gold
Were happy, happy, happy when the wind turned cold

Jackson signed and said "Again" for the book and the fingerplay, and he was perfectly patient with the poems, so yay!

(4) FIELD TRIPS: Today we went on a nature walk to a local freshwater marsh (the Ballona Wetlands) and enjoyed the changing seasons. We saw water birds (I think I saw my first nightjar!), turtles, bugs, butterflies and flowers, Jackson was able to walk freely for once (relatively freely), and he even saw a real, live, wild BUNNEH! Later this week we'll go to a local community garden to see what's growing and/or how the gardeners are putting their plots to bed for winter.