My First Book of Trains: All About Locomotives and Railcars for Kids

Nice book

I've loved trains since I was a little girl. This book makes a great treat for any train lover.

Great book on trains. Good pictures.

I really like the format of this book. Age-wise, I got this for my 22 mo old daughter and while she's still a bit young for it, I do like to show her the pictures of the different trains and read to her a page at a time. The explanations of the different trains are short and sweet. I think trains are cool but I don't feel like reading an entire synopsis about them or doing any digging to become an expert or highly knowledgeable. I think this book is a great way to get started though, and I would say that this book is appropriate for slightly older kids and up. I enjoyed learning about the kinds of trains as well as some of the history of why we have them to begin with. It's just my kind of book and there are a couple that piqued my interest which led me to learning a bit more. Great book to have and learn from without boring me to tears.

My First Book of Trains is a cute non-fiction book that teaches children a lot of different facts about trains. There are full color photographs on most pages that let children see what they are reading about. The book goes briefly into the history of transportation in general, with a page on horse drawn wagons before launching into how trains move on tracks, then the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. From there, the book identifies train parts and methods of powering trains. It then jumps briefly to staff who work aboard trains and then returns to different types of trains. It throws railcars in the middle of that, detailing passenger rail cars on page 32 and 33 before returning to different kinds of trains. The passenger train section begins on page 44.The book provides a lot of information, but it feels disjointed and poorly organized. My child absorbs information on trains like a sponge but was annoyed with the way the book kept jumping around. It's good to pick up and read a random page or browse through and select a page to read based on a cool photo, but reading it cover to cover is frustrating.

Awesome book filled with facts and photos about all kinds of trains, though my 35+ years as an early childhood educator say that the intended age is NOT 3-5. Perhaps they meant GRADES 3-5? Young children can enjoy the photos as an adult reads aloud to them, and explains vocabulary such as, “Freight trains carry goods.”The book has a glossary, informative text, photos with captions, and boxes with factoids. It would benefit from a table of contents as well.

This is a great book and my 3 and 5 year olds were super excited about their new train book but I feel like the content is way nicer their heads. They got bored with it really quickly. It’s a great book with lots of great information and pictures and illustrations but I feel like it likely wouldn’t be a young kids “first” book about trains. I would expect a much more simple and younger format for a “first” book so that’s my only complaint. I personally really like this book but I don’t think my kids will be much interested in the content for at least another couple years.

I bought this for a nephew who is almost three, but I think my nephew who is six will find this book more of his reading level (six and up, really, he's just on the edge of this). My FIRST Book of Trains isn't really the most accurate title. Still, this is a very good, informative book with lovely big pictures and clear text. Aside from the age category, I think this is a cute book, and it'll definitely have a place on bookshelves!