All aboard for a train ride through the alphabet! Whether chug-chug-chugging up a mountainside in an Incline train or zipping at super speed in a Bullet train, trains will get you where you need to be-A to Z!
Samantha R. Vamos is the author of The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden
Stirred, a Pura Belpre Illustrator Honor Book, Alphabet Trucks, and
Before You Were Here, Mi Amor. Samantha lives near Seattle,
Washington.
For many years Ryan O'Rourke's illustrations have appeared in
galleries, newspapers, and magazines, including a weekly
illustration for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. One Big Rain
marks Ryan's foray into children's picture books. He makes his home
in Connecticut.
A cheerful rhyming text and painterly illustrations created in
Adobe Photoshop offer young readers a different train for each
letter of the alphabet. The simple text is straightforward without
letting the rhyme become cloying: “G is for Glacier Express,/a
scenic, alpine glide./H is for Hurricane Turn./Wave a flag to catch
a ride.” Each train is featured on its own page, allowing the page
turns to reveal the next type of train. A spread ends the book by
giving factual information for each of the trains depicted, further
enhancing the book’s appeal to train enthusiasts. VERDICT Pair this
with Donald Crews’s Freight Train (Greenwillow,1978) and Margaret
Wise Brown’s Two Little Trains (HarperCollins, 2001) illustrated by
Leo and Diane Dillon, for a high-speed storytime.
-School Library Journal
In a companion to 2013's Alphabet Trucks, Vamos and O'Rourke
introduce 26 trains as they proceed from A to Z. They make room for
general categories like bullet trains and coal trains, as well as
location-specific conveyances—like the Xplorer of New South Wales,
Australia, and the Q train of New York City's subway system, taking
care of a couple tricky letters in the process. Vamos's rhymes are
as sturdy as the trains she discusses ("I is for incline train,/ a
steep, uphill track./ J is for Jupiter,/ with a wide balloon
stack"), while O'Rourke sneaks numerous upper-and lower-case
letters into his cheerful digital illustrations, which all but beg
to be pointed out by kids as the pages turn.
-Publishers Weekly
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