After the success of reading Margaret Wise Brown’s “Goodnight Moon” I was happy to find “Two Little Trains” written by the same author for my No. 1 Thomas the Tank Engine fan.
My toddler was delighted to see that the first few pages had the illustration of a present, which contained a wooden toy train. He immediately said that the wanted a purple present for Christmas – and of course, a train!
“Two Little Trains” is a creative book which features two trains on their individual and parallel journeys “to the West”.
One is a real, modern, express train going up hills, across bridges and through tunnels. Another is a child’s wooden toy train, which mimics the real train’s actual journey throughout the house using various props like:
- the shower for rain in the bathroom,
- the banisters of a flight of stairs for a hill,
- a book propped up horizontally for a tunnel,
- the toy train going through a bowl of grapes, which looked like purple trees…
The trains end their journey at the boy’s bedside when he goes to sleep
Personally, I found the ending rather abrupt and had some difficulty adjusting my reading tone to end appropriately with the sudden ending.
I think my toddler was also hanging on for further action LOL
Reading the book again and again with my toddler, I’m amazed at how creative “Two Little Trains” is and how the best children’s books are built out of such simple plot structures! Pure genius…
Rating: 




Yawnnnn…my toddler’s asleep and I think I’m done for the day too. Good night, everyone
Publisher: HarperCollins (September 23, 2003)
ISBN-10: 0064435687
ISBN-13: 978-0064435680
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