Sleep Train

February 15, 2018
All aboard the sleep train!The frontmatter pages introduce a child character reading a copy of Sleep Train--this very book--in bed. The child cuddles a stuffed animal on the title page. The perspective zooms out on the dedication and copyright double-page spread to show the child's bedroom with a view of a city skyline at sunset. Turn the page again, and the lilting, rhyming text begins. "Sleep Train. Jiggling down that track. / Ten sleepy cars going clickety-clack." The accompanying illustration of a train crossing a bridge with a city behind it removes readers from the bedroom to follow the train's journey. Later pages count through the 10 cars, identifying the last as "the sleeping car" in which the child narrator is "all cozy in bed." The illustrations are composed of digitally manipulated photographs of three-dimensional scenes that depict the train's journey through various landscapes, with a few interior scenes of the sleeping car. The child narrator, who has brown skin and tightly curled black hair, is made of polymer clay. Unfortunately, as night falls, the progressive darkness of some scenes makes it difficult to see details in some illustrations. When the train approaches a station as the text counts through cars seven, eight, and nine, for example, darkness overwhelms the eye, and the image is hard to discern. The next spread, which depicts the entire train in near silhouette at a distance under a moonlit sky, is much more successful.A lyrical, mostly lovely bedtime book. (Picture book. 2-4)

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March 5, 2018
This visually dramatic bedtime book features mixed-media three-dimensional models that Eldridge (Claymates) creates using found objects. An opening spread depicts the bedroom of a young train enthusiast reading a book in bed. The brown-skinned boy narrates his imagined journey on the eponymous train, which is headed through purple-pink twilight into the starry night: “Listen to the cows going mooo moooo.... Listen to the whistle going chooo-chooooo.” The boy counts not sheep but “ten sleepy cars going clickety-clack”: the tender, a boxcar, a tank car, a cattle car, a hopper, a gondola, a flatbed car, a coach car, a dining car, and his sleeping car, all sandwiched by “an engine in front and a caboose in back.” Spreads alternate between intricate views of the train’s regal interior and a countryside bathed in day’s-end light. London (the Froggy series) effectively uses repetitive sounds that echo both a train’s rhythm and the soothing sounds of a lullaby. Eldridge’s sculptural images create a fittingly dreamy world. Ages 2–5. Author’s agent: Dan Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.; illustrator’s agent: Lori Kilkelly, Rodeen Literary Management.

March 1, 2018

PreS-As dusk falls, an African American boy sits in bed, clutching his stuffed bunny and reading a book of the same name. ("Sleep Train. Jiggling down that track. Ten sleepy cars going clickety-clack.) The types of train cars are named and counted, up to 10, with a mostly effective rhyme. The boy is in the last car, the sleeping car, counting train cars instead of sheep, until his eyelids lower and he falls asleep, while the train keeps chugging along. The rich and jewel-toned illustrations of the sky turning from orange to violet as the book progresses, and the soothing rhythm, make this a perfect bedtime story. VERDICT This bedtime book about counting (and identifying) train cars will be a winner as a read-aloud and in storytime.-Ramarie Beaver, Plano Public Library System, TX

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