Summary
Follow a colorful train as it chugs along black train tracks. Car by car each part of the colorful locomotive is introduced. The very simple text introduces new vocabulary terms about trains while taking young readers on a short trip along a long track.
Personal Impressions
The small amount of text, simple illustrations, and bright colors make this a perfect book for very young children. While the vocabulary may be too difficult at first for some toddlers to comprehend, after many bedtime readings they will become experts in naming the different trains.
Reviews
Marisa Binder (Children's Literature)
A train track sits empty, waiting for a train to pass over it. Suddenly, the pages fill with eye popping illustrations of all the various types of train cars, each with different heights and shapes. A full page illustration demonstrates how all these pieces fit together to form a freight train, and a rainbow of color explodes onto the pages as this particular freight train moves forward on its journey. After following the fast moving train through cities, tunnels, and over bridges, the story returns to its beginning with the train track lying empty once the freight train has gone. Nothing is lost in the Spanish translation of this Caldecott Honor book, and the placement of the Spanish words directly under the English words allows children visually to associate the two languages. Beautifully illustrated with clear, interesting pictures helpful in learning colors, this bilingual book is an excellent tool for teaching. All aboard! 2008 (orig. 1978), Rayo/HarperCollins, $7.99. Ages 3 to 8.
Jessica Bailey (The Lorgnette - Heart of Texas Reviews (Vol. 16, No. 2))
This book covers one of children's favorite topics, trains. First, the book describes the different colors and uses of the train's cars, first in English and then in Spanish. The sentences are short, which makes it easy to keep even the youngest audience's attention. The train starts out slowly and then picks up speed and goes through tunnels, through cities, and over trestles. The English language version of this book won the Caldecott Award in 1979 and was recently translated into Spanish. The pictures are simple and fun and show the movement of the train as the colors blur and blend together. This is a great book and fun for students to hear the words in English and then in Spanish and guess which words are the color words in Spanish. Children also love trains and love to read about them anytime. Fiction. Grades Preschool-1. 2003, Greenwillow Books, Unpaged., $15.99. Ages 2 to 7.
This book covers one of children's favorite topics, trains. First, the book describes the different colors and uses of the train's cars, first in English and then in Spanish. The sentences are short, which makes it easy to keep even the youngest audience's attention. The train starts out slowly and then picks up speed and goes through tunnels, through cities, and over trestles. The English language version of this book won the Caldecott Award in 1979 and was recently translated into Spanish. The pictures are simple and fun and show the movement of the train as the colors blur and blend together. This is a great book and fun for students to hear the words in English and then in Spanish and guess which words are the color words in Spanish. Children also love trains and love to read about them anytime. Fiction. Grades Preschool-1. 2003, Greenwillow Books, Unpaged., $15.99. Ages 2 to 7.
Elementary Library Uses
This would be a great book to use with Prekindergarten and Kindergarten students when they begin learning their colors. Students could then make their own trains following the same colors as used in the book. It would also be great to use to discuss ordinal numbers. Some of the students could line up holding different colored trains similar to those in the book. The other students could identify which position they were in.
Bibliographic Citation
Crews, D. (1996). Freight train = tren de carga. China: HarperCollins.
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