goldjay's Full Review: Donald Crews - Freight Train: Tren De Carga
My son seems to love vehicles of all sorts. Donald Crews has written some very simple books about vehicles that my son seems to really enjoy. Freight Train is one of those books that he has really taken to. It is a fun book that is short enough for toddlers but still interesting enough for an adult to read over and over to said toddler. This book was published in 1978.
The Story
This story is very simple. It is about a train. The first few pages simply describe the different cars on the train. The cars are described not only by the type of car but by the color that they are in this book.
The train moves along the tracks going “through tunnels” and “by cities” and “over trestles.” It goes by daylight and by night. It goes until it is gone. And, that is the whole story. It really is quite simple.
Text and Illustrations
This book has twenty pages. Each page has very few words. The page that has the most describes some of the trains. That page has twelve words yet it doesn’t even seem like that many since you read each set of words with the train car it matches so it’s almost like it’s three different pages almost. Basically, the pages have four to five words each and still the book tells a story.
The illustrations are fun and match the story. I like how each train car is a different color because it helps young children not only learn to identify colors but also learn to identify the different train cars. The illustrations in this book are all black line drawings filled in with colors. They are simple illustrations yet they are detailed enough to show what they need to show to really be a complete part of this book.
My Thoughts
My son loves this book and has asked for it to be read to him almost every night this past week. I know because I have read it to him! Usually daddy does the bedtime routing and story thing but he’s out of town this week so I have gotten the chance to enjoy story time with my son. He definitely loves this book!
He had read this book with daddy before I began reading it to him this week. It seems that he can point to each train car as it is read to him. He seems to know which one is which and even does this if you read them out of order. Daddy must have read this book a lot too!
I love that the train cars in this book are all different colors. It helps children learn their colors. I can say “which one is red” to my son and he points to the red caboose. I have noticed that he is starting to be able to find the right colors with other toys too so I am going to conclude that this book really is teaching my son his colors.
I also really like that this book is very simple. My son loves to look at the pictures but he does not tolerate books with lots of text. This book is totally the right speed for him since it is not too long and it actually has some action to it when the train starts to move.
Recommendations
This is a great book. It is perfect for toddlers and I can only wish I had the board book version but I do not. Thus, this is a book that an adult reads to my son when he is sitting on their lap since my son has been known to tear paper books. Still, this seems to be one of his very favorite books at the moment and he wants to hear it over and over again. This book is actually fun for an adult to read too because it is so simple and fun to use different inflections with.
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