Synopsis
"All aboard! All aboard! Bustle and fuss, bustle and fuss. Rumble, rumble, rumble, roll. Rattle and rap, clickety clack." There’s nothing like a visit to the sea, and what better way to get there than by train? Youngsters join in as the train whooshes through a tunnel, rattles across a level crossing, and rumbles along the track taking its passengers safely to their station. This delightfully simple and colorfully illustrated story sweeps the little ones along on an imaginative journey they’ll want to take again and again.
Publishers Weekly
Steggall's (The Life of a Car) virtuoso torn-paper collages follow a boy and his family on a train trip through the British countryside to the coast, where an unnamed (but grandmotherly) relative greets them with open arms. As the title hints, the economical text is strictly impressionistic: “Whoooooosh! Whoooooosh!... rocking and rolling and rushing and racing, skimming the sky, skimming the sky.” The detail-rich, full-spread pictures, however, are stunning in their evocation of the real world. Sleekly handsome, the long red, black and white–striped train cuts quite a figure, its boldly graphic exterior and zigzag shape playing counterpoint to lush hills, rippling waters and workaday towns. Steggall's tour de force appears near the end, when the train crosses a classic masonry arch bridge spanning an estuary. It's an image that's both postcard-perfect and triumphantly dynamic—a tribute to both the joys of trainspotting and the ingenuity of the human race. Ages 2–5. (July)