I'm Taking a Trip on My Train

From School Library Journal PreSchool-K-The successful team that produced The House I'll Build for the Wrens and We're Making Breakfast for Mother (both Greenwillow, 1997) are right on track with this new cumulative, rhyming rebus. A blond boy dons an engineer's cap, gives a roll call of his locomotive and cars, and then offers a cheerful journey over trestles and through crowds. Although the trip begins to drag somewhere in the middle, the target audience will hang on until the end. In a humorous twist, readers step back to view the model railroad strewn throughout a disheveled home. The boy's mother says, "I have a request (I don't think it's too hard):/Before going to bed, pick up this freight yard,/because during the night I'd like to refrain/from taking an unplanned trip on your train." Parker uses watercolor paints, colored pencils, and black pen to create dedicated reproductions of No. 1 scale model railroad cars.