I Like Trains

by Daisy Hirst, Daisy Hirst (Illustrator)

Overview

Daisy Hirst’s charming ode to a toddler’s love of trains, featuring her sweet signature artwork

Whether sending toy animals on a journey around a model track or driving a cardboard-box locomotive, this little puppy really likes trains. All aboard! But best of all is riding a real train to visit someone special—and playing with more trains there! Simple yet evocative prose and pictures make this a delightful read for the youngest train enthusiasts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536212761
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.25(w) x 11.69(h) x 0.42(d)
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Daisy Hirst is the author-illustrator of The Girl with the Parrot on Her Head, Hilda and the Runaway Baby, and three books about monster siblings Natalie and Alphonse. She lives in Cambridge, England.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/25/2021

With sturdy artwork and reportorial language, Hirst (Hamish Takes the Train) celebrates a young train enthusiast in a story that foregrounds experiences over engineering. The narrator—a tangerine-colored dog with a big snout, a wide smile, and a tail like a flag—kneels next to a train set laid out on the floor. “I like playing with my train,” the pup says, pushing a red engine over a bridge. And there are lots of ways to do so: the hound loads animals into cars, makes a train out of cardboard boxes, and dons a bright blue conductor’s cap. The pup’s family has plenty of books about the topic, too (spot art is helpfully categorized: “long trains/ short trains/ trains with faces/ fast trains/ slow trains/ trains in races”), but the best thing, the young hound says, is “when we go to the station to catch the train ourselves.” All the high points of the journey are captured (“darkness in a tunnel,/ and another train/ whooshing by”), and so is the characters’ surprise destination. Youngest readers will warm to having their special interest recognized in a volume that keys into a kid’s deeply held passion. Ages 2–5. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

With sturdy artwork and reportorial language, Hirst (Hamish Takes the Train) celebrates a young train enthusiast in a story that foregrounds experiences over engineering. . .Youngest readers will warm to having their special interest recognized in a volume that keys into a kid’s deeply held passion.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A distilled, perfected love of all things locomotive. . .Simple storytelling and even simpler words make this an ideal selection for even the youngest of train enthusiasts. The protagonist’s gender is left wide open for children of all kinds to identify with. Hirst’s screen-printed art is rendered in bright, bold colors of exceeding cheer and good humor. . . Marvelous—poised to make train converts of readers one and all.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

From the Publisher

★ 2021-03-02
A distilled, perfected love of all things locomotive.

An anthropomorphic puppy tells readers right from the start, “I like playing with my train.” This play includes both running a toy train along tracks and stringing cardboard boxes together, pretending to be the engineer. They love reading a wide variety of books about all kinds of different trains, but best of all is when they get to ride with their parent on the train. Tickets purchased, they find the platform, their train, and their seats. The world goes whizzing by, and at the end there is Grandma and a train playground nearby, to boot. Simple storytelling and even simpler words make this an ideal selection for even the youngest of train enthusiasts. The protagonist’s gender is left wide open for children of all kinds to identify with. Hirst’s screen-printed art is rendered in bright, bold colors of exceeding cheer and good humor. Her world bustles with dogs of many colors, all unclothed but many accessorized: with backpacks, purses, glasses, etc. One dog at the railway station uses a wheelchair. Tantalizingly, a cat seems to wave at the protagonist from a passing train. Even children that might describe themselves as train neutral may feel a twinge of envy or longing as the hero’s train whooshes past backyards, roads, factories, boats, and more on their journey. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.7-by-20.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 19% of actual size.)

Marvelous—poised to make train converts of readers one and all. (Picture book. 2-4)

Kirkus Reviews