Inside Freight Train
- Book Review,
by Donald Crews
Amazon.com
Hop on board and see what's inside the freight train! Slide apart the sturdy pages of this unusual board book to reveal the contents of the cars. The refrigerator car keeps apples, peaches, and pears cold and fresh, while the tender carries coal that burns in the fire box, and--everyone's favorite--the caboose holds the train crew that helps deliver the freight. A continuous track runs through the book, with connecting brightly colored train cars. An appealing concept, executed simply and pleasingly, Inside Freight Train can't miss with the train-loving masses. Caldecott Honor winner Donald Crews (Truck and Freight Train) has a way with heavy machinery and young readers. (Ages 2 to 5) --Emilie Coulter
From Publishers Weekly
In Donald Crews's Inside Freight Train, a board book based on the Caldecott Honor book Freight Train, children can slide open the doors of each train car. Inside, the pages explain what usually travels on a freight train, "like toys and books,/... / apples and peaches and pears/ cold and fresh." This twist on an old favorite is sure to be a hit. ( Mar.) Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ages 1-3. One of the best designed board books to come along in quite a while, this makes Crews' classic picture book Freight Train (1978) interactive by letting children open certain cars to peek at what's inside. This is no lift-the-flap (and eventually rip-it-off) book. Every other page is twice as thick and split in the middle, allowing the outside half of the page to slide sideways (as the doors slide on the box car of a train) to reveal another, smaller page inside, on which the car's contents are shown. Most train books, even picture books about trains, have a text that's too long for the attention span of the two- and three-year-olds who usually request them. Here the text is simple, with phrases that can become a question-and-answer game. On one page the text begins, "The purple box car carries . . ." When the car is slid open, it continues "toys and books." By the second reading, even toddlers will be finishing the line, or at least taking charge by pulling the door open to find the answer. Given the perennial appeal of trains for young children, the fun of sliding the doors, and the satisfaction young children take in revealing what is hidden, this little book really delivers. A "second generation" board book that isn't a diminished version of the original picture book, but rather a playful first step for younger children. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Here comes the freight train! In this new sturdy sliding board book, Caldecott Award winner Donald Crew takes children right on board as they slide open the doors to see what's inside each train car.
About the Author
Donald Crews is the renowned creator of two Caldecott Honor books, Freight Train and Truck. Among his other enormously popular books are such favorites as Night at the Fair, Sail Away, Bigmama's, Shortcut, and School Bus. He and his wife, Ann Jonas, live in New York's Hudson River Valley. Donald Crews grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and says that all through his childhood the members of his family were always doing something with their hands. He was always drawing pictures. Now, in the old farmhouse where he lives with his wife, the noted author and illustrator Ann Jonas, Donald Crews is still drawing pictures.After graduating from New York City's Cooper Union, Mr. Crews spent three years working as a designer. He was assistant art director of Dance magazine, on the staff of a small design studio, and did freelance work as a book-jacket designer. But in 1962 he was inducted into the Army, and for a time his artistic pursuits were set aside. As the end of his eighteen-month military stint in Germany approached, he assigned himself to the task of writing and illustrating a children's book to add to his portfolio. The result was the brilliant concept book We Read: A to Z (Harper & Row, 1967), which, nearly twenty years later, was reissued by Greenwillow Books. Ten Black Dots, a counting book, came next, and then several books for which he did illustrations only. But the turning point came in 1978, when Greenwillow published Freight Train, a picture book inspired by Mr. Crews's childhood train trips from Newark to visit his grandmother in Florida. It was named a Caldecott Honor Book. Since then, Mr. Crews has created several other highly acclaimed picture books (including Truck, a 1981 Calclecott Honor Book), all painted in the flat, clean colors and bright, unambiguous shapes that are the hallmarks of his striking graphics. When Donald Crews is asked why he focuses on picture books, he frequently answers, "Why not?" All the tools necessary for the creation of any piece of art are also elements in a successful picture book. Mr. Crews chooses a subject, explores ways to develop the subject visually, writes a story, then produces his finished illustrations. And the final audience, the children, tell him that they like what he does. Why not, indeed!
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