Review by Booklist Review
PreS-Gr. 1. A set of recently discovered lyrics by America's favorite troubadour, presented here without music, postulates a whimsical alternative to the stork-special-delivery school of reproductive thought. I guess little babies come along just about any way they can, Guthrie muses--though he prefers to imagine them chugging home aboard the new baby train. Guthrie's verses are as ramblin' as their nomadic originator, and these don't translate to print as well as the far better known This Land Is Your Land did in Kathy Jakobsen's 1998 book. But Frazee finds spark to ignite her imagination in Guthrie's words, unfolding a visual tall tale about a youngster who hitches a ride aboard the train to soothe its infant passengers. Flecked brown paper imparts a Dust Bowl atmosphere, and backgrounds rendered with powerful horizontal strokes suggest the blurred view through a train's window. Press this upon adoptive families, who will particularly appreciate the notion of babies on a whistle-stop tour of welcoming households. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Even when the characters are simply lazing on a front porch, Frazee's pictures hum with energy and possibility, in this free-form Guthrie reverie. Her elegant ink striations add texture to the compositions and enhance the understated dynamism of the guitar-toting boy narrator, who "reveals" the origins of babies. "I guess little babies come along/ just about any way they can./ Cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes,/ any way they can come./ But here's the way they might come.../ on a train./ Sort of a new baby train!" As a tribute to Guthrie's role as the Okie balladeer, Frazee conjures a romanticized Dust Bowl-era setting. She employs an impressive array of brown tones and blue accents to create a landscape that feels expansive rather than oppressive; her characters look scrappy, but never dispossessed. The narrator and a trio of tots hitch a ride on the crowded baby train as it swoops through the land, making deliveries of infants to grateful farm couples (the final stop is the boy's own family). Here, as in her Roller Coaster, Frazee rewards the audience with wonderful visual details: A sign on the train's coal car shows a howling baby with the red "No" slash through it; one diapered passenger calmly reads a newspaper to pass the time; a porter moves through the car handing out bottles of milk. Readers will concur with Guthrie that "everyone is gonna be so happy./ All these babies are goin' home." Ages 3-6. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Guthrie's song is brought to life by Frazee's gouache illustrations, which tell a story all their own. A guitar-playing narrator and his younger siblings sit together on their front porch, as the boy tries to explain where babies come from. The text reads, "I guess little babies come along/just about any way they can./Cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes,/any way they can come." In subsequent illustrations, the children dash off, wait for a train together, and watch as their brother climbs aboard. Babies also wait for the train and when it arrives, they line up, all sizes, shapes, and colors, with diapers dragging and tickets ready. The narrator tells their tale as the train races through hill and dale, clouds and sky, to deliver its cargo. On the way, the little ones are served bottles of milk, take naps, and then, one by one, are dropped off at their new homes. The boy brings the last one to his house, where the entire family welcomes the new arrival. The brown palette of the artwork and the clothing of the characters give this book a Depression-era look, while the technique of using lines to fill the backgrounds provides a constant sense of motion. Swirling clouds surround a train that doesn't need tracks and at times looks like it's flying to its destination. A fanciful and fun rendition.-Jane Marino, Bronxville Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Preschool) This one's all about the pictures. Guthrie's folksong about one possible way babies might be delivered is buoyant but disjointed; Frazee turns it into a coherent, child-appealing picture book. A young boy with a guitar boards the new baby train, accompanying some dozen infants heading for their new homes. The babies, as we've come to expect from Frazee (see Susan Meyers's Everywhere Babies, rev. 5/01), are nicely differentiated -- by skin color, hairstyle, and a cap or two. But all receive the same joyous welcome from their new families at journey's end. In a satisfying twist, the boy brings home the last of the babies himself. Frazee's setting -- the 1930s Dust Bowl -- is striking, her gouache illustrations of a flat, sere landscape reinforced by speckled-brown-paper backgrounds and endpapers that look like corrugated cardboard. Frazee's babies are a humorous combination of innocence and experience: they drink bottles, suck their thumbs, and sleep in baby postures but also tote their own bags (suitcases and trunks, bandanas tied onto poles), read the newspaper (The Hobo News), and sing lustily along with the boy. As Guthrie says about the babies and their families, ""You know, everyone is gonna be so happy"" -- and that goes for readers of this picture book, too. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Rather than airborne transport of newborns by the stork, singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie imagined distribution of infants by a special-delivery train. The words to his song serve as the text for this whimsical view of toddlers riding in an old-time train on their way to their new families. An older boy with a guitar (recalling a young Woody, perhaps) hops aboard, helps the conductor with childcare, and then returns home with one of the babies as a new addition to his own large family. Frazee uses gouache on speckled tan paper that mimics brown paper sacks, conveying a nostalgic flavor of Depression-era Dust Bowl farms with flat fields, tiny houses, and big, loving families, and her interpretation of the train effectively shows its special powers with varying perspectives. Unfortunately, as charming as the illustrations are, this train isn't bound for glory, as there is no music included for the unfamiliar song (which was only recently recorded for the first time) and the lyrics are not particularly successful as text to be read aloud. (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
