Review by New York Times Review
TRAINS ARE BIG, strong, fast, loud. Just like America. Trains typically get in trouble when they're not moving forward. Just like America. They're romantic, too - again, just like America, or at least the idea of America. So it's no wonder that trains, whether as symbols of might or restlessness, have played such an iconic role in our popular culture, from the folk tale "John Henry" to such songs as "Mystery Train" and "500 Miles," to films as varied as "The General," "North by Northwest" and "Before Sunrise." But who loves trains more than kids? You'd think there would be a surfeit of whistleblowing, wheels-aturning classics in the picture-book section, shelves and shelves of them, right up there with bunny books and princesses. Trains are so wonderfully graphic, too, slashing across landscapes and barreling full speed ahead to force dramatic perspectives - after all, what is a train but a line on steroids? Funny, though, I can think of only a couple of genuine picture-book classics starring locomotives: "The Little Engine That Could" and "The Polar Express" - and maybe I should also include "Green Eggs and Ham," because as a rule, one should always include "Green Eggs and Ham." ("I will not eat them in the rain. I will not eat them on a train.") Oh, right, I'm forgetting "Thomas the Tank Engine," the multimedia phenomenon. Or rather, as the father of a son who once had 40 miles of Thomas track, I'm blocking his dutiful memory. Leave it to the English to neuter trains and turn them into civil servants with wheels. Happily, we have three new American train books to consider here. I'm not sure any are future classics, but all are first-rate; and one, "Locomotive," by Brian Floca, is the very deserving winner of a 2013 New York Times Best Illustrated Books Award. "Locomotive" tells the story of a family's 1869 journey across America on the newly completed transcontinental railroad. A mother and two children serve as our surrogates on this trip, but they are essentially extras in a book whose star is the train itself, from steam engine to caboose, along with everyone and everything that keeps it thundering down the track toward Californ-eye-ay. Floca, whose previous books include "Moonshot" and "Lightship," seems intent on doing for modes of transport what David Macaulay has done for cathedrals, castles and pyramids. "Locomotive" incorporates many dollops of technical detail about 19th-century railroading, but while flirting at times with book-report dryness, Floca mostly keeps things vivid. Mordant humor helps: "Here's what they say about switchmen: / You can tell that one is new to the job / if he still has all his fingers." "Locomotive" is unusual for a picture book in that it is intended to please a fairly wide age group, which means it may also frustrate some readers or listeners. Older children will appreciate the wealth of detail and history, while younger ones will be entranced by the appropriately chugga-chugga rhythm of Floca's free verse and his abundant use of sound effects (playfully emphasized with well-muscled, 19th-century-style typefaces): "Now comes the locomotive!/The iron horse, the great machine! / Fifty feet and forty tons /Hear the clear, hard call of her bell:/CLANG-CLANG! CLANG-CLANG! CLANG-CLANG! / Hear the HISSSSSSSSS and the SPIT of the steam!/Hear the engine breathe like a beast: / HUFF HUFF HUFF! " Of course, the risk is that younger readers might get bored by, say, the digression on braking protocol, while older children will find the clang-clang business babyish. But everyone - parents, too - will be thrilled to learn how a train toilet worked in 1869. (It sat atop a simple hole; not polite to use while in a station.) Everyone will be even more thrilled by Floca's illustrations. He's a brilliant, exacting draftsman; he also knows how to give his pictures a cinematic energy, especially in the way he "cuts" from page to page. A spread showing the train crossing a rickety wooden bridge uses a funny visual trick to jolt your eyeballs along with the passengers. Flipping through this book made me smile with pleasure before I even read it. Elisha Cooper's "Train" updates "Locomotive" by taking a contemporary, more impressionistic cross-country journey, one that begins in a New York City for which Cooper has imagined a far more graceful point of embarkation than the miserable, smelly dungeon that is our real-life Penn Station. (Memo to self: idea for Gothic romance set in the haunted bowels of Penn Station - "The Hunchback of New Jersey Transit"?) Cooper's trip starts with a commuter train, segues to a passenger train, then a freight train, and so on, until we find ourselves on a futuristic bullet train whizzing optimistically into a fanciful San Francisco terminus that looks as if it were designed by Eero Saarinen. Cooper's prose is more restrained than Floca's, but just as vivid and often singing with poetic specificity. I love this passage: "As the train approaches a rail crossing, it sounds like a storm. As the train passes, it sounds like dropped pots and pans. As the train leaves, it sounds like the da dum da dum of a beating heart. Then, silence." Cooper's illustrations have a similar feel, detailed yet impressionistic - no mean feat. I saved my favorite for last. "How to Train a Train" is exactly that: a guidebook that teaches children how to capture and tame wild trains. "First, get up really early in the morning and find a good hiding spot close to some trains. . . . As the sun rises, the trains will begin to stir and start their engines. Watch them work and play. It's only natural that you'll want to take home all the trains, but don't just grab the first one you see. Take your time and choose one that's right for you. Got one? Time to make your move." As you can tell, Jason Carter Eaton's deadpan prose is calibrated just-so. He wisely leaves the abundant belly laughs to John Rocco's paintings, which have their own zany style but also owe something to the absurdist scales and perspectives of the great Bruce McCall. Alarmed parents will be relieved to learn that trains make terrific pets, capable of learning tricks and amenable to baths, so next time the kids are begging, maybe skip the hamsters and go diesel. "How to Train a Train" doesn't deal with the ultimate pet-related question - mortality - but my advice is to parry any anxious queries with the old fib about sending it to a nice roundhouse upstate. BRUCE HANDY is a writer and editor at Vanity Fair.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 10, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* As it turns out, a train is not so very different from a dog at least in the way you train it. Our young narrator, outfitted in pith helmet and khakis, sets the tone: So you want a pet train? Well, of course you do! He begins at the beginning, showing readers how to find trains ( early steam engines pretty much just sit in a museum ); how to capture a train (smoke signals seem to be the best method); and what to name it (a gallery of pictures shows Smokey, Sir Chugsalot, et al.). Once a train gets home, it can be soothed by reading aloud and sent to sleepy town by listening to clickity-clack music. And oh the fun to be had as you teach your new train to fetch or rollover. Eaton's tongue-in-cheek and eminently enjoyable text is matched by Rocco's smooth and sleek artwork laced with whimsy. A simple sentence like How does it feel about tunnels and bridges? results in a cleverly angled spread of a boy pulling his nervous train over a wooden bridge. Despite the human (or is it canine?) sensibility with which the trains are invested, they also seem like real mechanical objects sturdy, strong, and powerful. Often they're set against serene skies with blues and golds that could have come from the brush of Maxfield Parrish. This will get kids rolling.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Styled as a get-to-know-your-pet guide, this manual teaches "everything you need to know to choose, track, and train your very own pet train." Intricately detailed, digitally colored graphite illustrations picture boys and girls selecting between vintage iron horses and sleek diesel designs. Rocco (Blackout) styles the trains' headlamps and windshields as friendly eyes and contrasts the engines' bulk against their tiny doting masters. Wearing a pith helmet and desert gear, a boy narrator lures a steam train with lumps of coal and a "Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga!" He knows he's in luck when he hears an answering "Choo-choo!" Eaton (The Day My Runny Nose Ran Away) recommends train names from the ordinary to the hilarious (Nathan, Smokey, and Captain Foofamaloo) and suggests activities and tricks. "How will you know if the train you caught is the one? Don't worry. You'll know," he writes, as a girl in red braids walks slowly along, whistling innocently, as a giant engine peers over a hill. An immersive experience for junior rail fans. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Victoria Sanders & Associates. Illustrator's agent: Rob Weisbach Creative Management. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-From Thomas the Tank Engine to The Little Engine That Could, kids love personified trains, so it's not such a huge chug forward to imagine one as a pet. But how do you select, train, and care for your pet engine? Written as a guidebook for new owners, this amusing title incorporates language usually associated with pet ownership and child rearing. "It's only natural that you'll want to take home all the trains, but don't just grab the first one you see. Take your time and choose one that's right for you." Juxtaposing sensible tips with the absurdity of a huge pet locomotive creates a text that is at once believable and preposterous. "A warm bath can help calm a nervous train.and few trains can resist a good read-aloud." But what really makes this concept roar down the track are the entrancing digitally colored illustrations that perfectly capture the expressiveness and playfulness of the pet trains. Whether illustrating the new pet going for a "walk," performing a trick, or enjoying a playdate with other pet vehicles, the artist has so cleverly incorporated facial features onto the various engines that their distinct personalities shine through, as does the obvious affection children feel for their new pets. Additionally, the large-scale, saturated colors, and comic details of these pictures give young readers a boxcar full to look at and appreciate. From the appealing cover to the final moonlit scene of a boy and his pet steam engine happily chugging down the track, this book is sure to be popular with train and pet lovers alike.-Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library (c) Copyright 2013. 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
The ultimate dream for railroad fanatics: pet trains! Eaton offers humorously detailed instructions on how to locate and catch a wild train, with tips on naming and helping your locomotive adjust to life among humans. Digitally colored graphite illustrations have energy and excitement in this fantastical picture book that's sure to be on heavy rotation in train-loving households. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Train and pet enthusiasts alike will delight in this rollicking story about selecting, naming, soothing and caring for a full-sized locomotive. The information in this "guidebook" is conveyed by a young expert clad in safari shorts, boots and pith helmet, with binoculars strung around his neck; an enormous freight train sits patiently on the other end of his leash. Friends demonstrate what's involved in pet ownership: A blonde girl with pink fairy wings paints hearts and stars on her passenger train, Sparkles, while an African-American boy observes the dirt a train can track into the house. The recommended method to attract a pet train plays perfectly to kid logic: The tracker awakens early, hiding behind a desert cactus while the engines play. He arouses his subject's interest with smoke signals, then proceeds to offer lumps of coal, compliments and encouraging "chugga-chuggas." Rocco's graphite, digitally colored compositions are a successful blend of striking, painterly spreads (the hero as engineer, speeding through the moonlit night) and humorous cameos. Eaton's deadpan text allows maximum artistic freedom: "Start with a simple trick" shows the engine rolling over; "then move on to something a bit harder" depicts Fido jumping through a flaming ring. With believable expressiveness in the characterizations of the trains and a scale perfect for groups, this affectionate sendup communicates all the exasperation, responsibility and rewards of having a pet. (Picture book. 4-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
