Trains: Steaming! Pulling! Huffing! - Hardcover

Hubbell, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761451943 ISBN 13: 9780761451945

Publisher: Two Lions, 2005

Synopsis

Trains, trains, trains! Giant engines snorting, puffing, steaming, pulling, rushing, huffing! All kinds of trains, from cabooses to hoppers and commuter trains to zoo trains, clickety-clack along the tracks. The mixed-media illustrations using clip art, etchings, original drawings, and maps will remind parents and grandparents of an earlier time. Children will enjoy the collages, puns, and delightful wordplay throughout.

About this title

About the Author

Author Patricia Hubbell is the author of ten books of poetry for children, including Boo! Halloween Poems and Limericks as well as Trucks: Whizz! Zoom! Rumble! Her poems appear in numerous anthologies. She lives in Easton, Connecticut.

Illustrators Megan Halsey and Sean Addy work in a studio in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Ms. Halsey also illustrated Trucks: Whizz! Zoom! Rumble!

Reviews

PreSchool-Grade 1–This book introduces every possible kind of train through a rollicking rhyme: Silver trains. Black trains./Speeding-down-the-track trains./Passenger trains. Freight trains./Crossing-every-state trains. The text will have readers building up steam and momentum until the very last page, when the trains and children can both rest. Unfortunately, the illustrations combine drawings, clip art, etchings, and maps, and they are too busy. Busy can be good, but with the small size of this book and its potential as a great read-aloud, the pictures are extremely distracting. On one spread, the workers are named, but the illustrations of them below the text do not line up, and small labels next to the figures indicate their jobs. It also seems as though the book were squeezed as much as possible in order to fit into 32 pages and uses every last inch of space. Stick with Michael Rex's My Freight Train (Holt, 2002) or Philemon Sturgess's I Love Trains! (HarperCollins, 2001).–Genevieve Gallagher, Murray Elementary School, Charlottesville, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 1-3. Intricate collage illustrations add whimsy to Hubbell's rhyming text about all kinds of trains, train cars, cargoes, and railroad employees. The deceptively simple rhymes convey a great deal of information, and the fanciful collages contribute sly humor: Venetian gondoliers ride on gondola cars; a coal car belongs to the "Naughty and Nice Coal Co."; and large rats toting briefcases and newspapers hurry along with the human commuters in the New York City subway. The energetic design, with varying typefaces and layouts, reinforces the power and excitement of trains. When freights "rumble, rock, and ROAR," the letters of the word roar increase in size from the first R to the last, just as the roar of a real freight becomes louder as the train approaches. Take this along on a long trip to keep children occupied, or share it at storytime; make sure to give listeners an opportunity to peruse the art for the humor hidden in the details. Diane Foote
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Two Lions
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761451943
• ISBN 13: 9780761451945
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Halsey Megan, Addy Sean
• Number of pages: 32