I Love Trains

A little boy in a striped engineer cap and overalls extols the many virtues of trains in this boldly colored celebration of that most romantic form of transportation. Holding a toy train, he gazes out his bedroom window onto the bucolic countryside bisected by a set of tracks, while train cars "hoot and roar as they rumble by my door." One long train stretches over the course of the book; every two-page spread features several types of cars and the boy's simple, rhyming descriptions. "Some carry steel; some carry scrap, or secret stuff that's under wrap." The latter shows what's obviously an airplane, under cover. Vibrant swaths of color and heavy black outlines make the vivid, almost childlike pictures particularly pleasing to the eye. And as the last car rounds the bend, we discover there's a special reason our hero loves trains so much, especially the caboose! Tiny train fans will cheer to find this delightful companion to Philemon Sturges and Shari Halpern's I Love Trucks!. (Ages 3 to 6) --Emilie Coulter