Where Do Steam Trains Sleep at Night?

The publisher says the story shows many kinds of trains going to bed: freight trains, passenger trains, subways, trolleys and more wash up, have a snack, load their teddies for story time, and get rocked to sleep by mommy and daddy trains beneath a blanket of stars. Kirkus Reviews, quoted on the publisher's page, says hopeful engineers will want to identify the many different types of trains and calls the book an inclusive primer that out-of-the-know adults will appreciate. Kirkus, as reprinted on the page, lists the trains of the verse as steam, passenger, freight, fire, high-speed and breakdown trains as well as trolleys, with a monorail and a subway resting under a brightly lit city street, and says that most of them end up around a roundhouse under their blanket of stars. One verse asks where the snowplow trains sleep once the tracks are clear.

This is a book to read aloud at bedtime. The publisher lists a hardcover of 32 pages with a publisher age range of 3 to 7 years. It is illustrated by Christian Slade and written by Brianna Caplan Sayres, the same team the publisher credits with Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night?. According to her biography on the publisher's page, Brianna Caplan Sayres's picture books include the Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night? series, Tiara Saurus Rex and Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?: A Hardboiled Mystery, so a family that knows the digger books will recognise the format. The page gives a trim size of 10 by 8 inches, a school grade range of preschool to grade 2, a Lexile measure of AD510L and a Fountas and Pinnell level of K. School Library Journal, also reprinted there, rates it for preschool to kindergarten and calls it a sound selection for one-on-one and small group sharing, perfect for bedtime story hours. Its reviewer notes that small trains shown beside their larger versions mimic parents and children, that a miniature steam train sips cocoa next to its mother, and that a mouse dressed as an engineer appears in every spread.

It suits a parent or grandparent buying a bedtime book about trains for a child between 3 and 7, the publisher's age range. A reader who wants technical detail on how locomotives work should look at a reference title instead. The publisher presents the book as a rollicking bedtime story for train lovers everywhere, built on the idea that little trains do at bedtime the same things a child does. The publisher also lists a board book edition for ages 0 to 3, at 26 pages, and an ebook.

Steam Train, Dream Train (board book, Chronicle Books) is another bedtime train book for ages 2 to 4. The Little Engine That Could is a train classic already in this catalogue.

Image: National Geographic (Penguin Random House) · source

100 Train Journeys of a Lifetime

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Image: Lorenz Books / Simon & Schuster · source

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Image: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers · source

Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo (board book)

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