Review by Booklist Review
All aboard the Discovery Express, which takes readers across countries and time. Unfortunately, this isn't a pleasure trip, as Professor Pendleton has gone missing, and it is up to readers with the help of a few crew members to solve the mystery and, in the process, learn about the history of transportation. Each two-page spread opens on a time and place important on the transportation time line, including the construction of the Panama Canal, the creation of the first steam engine, and Leonardo da Vinci's workshop. There are plenty of interactive flaps to lift, which reveal more about the transportation method or have a code to crack in order to get a clue to the next destination. Clohoshy-Cole depicts sweeping landscapes and expressive characters that would fit in well in an animated movie, and his diagrams of how things work are easy to understand without sacrificing detail. For history lovers, transportation gurus, and code crackers, this STEM-based picture book will be one to spend plenty of time with.--Linsenmeyer, Erin Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Conductor Pierre Henri and explorer Nancy Delany serves as readers' guides aboard the Discovery Express, a time-traveling train that the authors use to dive into the history of transportation. Multiple flaps are incorporated into the pages, lifting to reveal details about transportation milestones and technologies (such as how steam engines and electric motors work), as well as clues designed to help readers solve the mystery of a missing professor. Leonardo da Vinci's workshop, the Panama Canal, and the North Carolina site of the Wright brothers' flight are among the locations visited, and Clohoshy-Cole captures these and other settings in cinematic digital illustrations that highlight the excitement and potential surrounding these advancements. It's an engaging overview of humankind's attempts to travel faster and farther-and of the pilots, inventors, and dreamers who made those developments possible. Ages 7-10. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A train takes young travelers through time and space to witness highlights in the history of transportation.Welcomed aboard by Pierre the conductor and Nancy the tour guide (both, like all but a few figures in background crowds, white), readers set out on a journey that zigzags through various eras, from ancient times to the 1930s, and geographically from San Francisco to St. Petersburg. On the trip they will see the first appearances of wheels and automobiles, hot air balloons, submarines, and other vehicles, plus significant inventions from good roads to steam, electric, and jet engines. Lifting flaps cut into the painted illustrations of each scene reveals diagrams and descriptions of the technology and physical principles that made each conveyance workwith, as an extra, clues in diverse types of codes and ciphers to each subsequent destination. Though the tour ends before it gets to spacecraft or maglev trains and mostly stays in Europe and North America, it does stop for appreciative looks at several vehicles imagined by Leonardo da Vinci and also pauses for nods to the inventors of the rickshaw, roller skates, and other lesser-studied ways of getting from here to there.A smooth ride, with a few stops that are off the well-beaten path. (Informational novelty. 3-5) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
