A few years ago my neice and nephew received a copy of this book as a Christmas present. Since then, I have purchased several copies for gifts to friends and family members. I have also recommeded acquiring copies of this book to many school librarians, public libraries and parents. As an educator, I cannot stress how valuable a teaching tool this book is. It can be used to teach history, interculturalism, anti-racism, self-pride, reading, writing...

The only thing I would change about this book would be to return some of the poems from the original publication especially "Girls Can Too". Every student I share these poems with reacts favourably, since students are the greatest critics, this is high praise indeed. 5 STARS!

(Maybe in the future books will be published with e-mail addresses of the authors. This will allow the authors to know the impact they are having on their readers.)

This is one of the great children's stories of all time. I loved it as a child and read it over and over again, and my son has been demanding it as a bedtime story regularly since he was2-1/2 years old. The 1991 Platt & Munk (a division of Grosset & Dunlap) edition, beautifully illustrated by Cristina Ong, leaves out all the requests made to the busy trains. The story is now very brief (which is why I give it only 3 stars instead of the 5 the full-length version deserves)--I suppose because it is a board book--but the essentials are all there. It also changes the sex of the engines from male to female, so perhaps some parents would like to read this edition to their children as well as one of the others.

I first heard of this story while watching a Barney video with my son. I bought the anniversary edition of the book. The "shortened" board books - while culled from the original book - don't have the words that my son loves to hear - "I pull you - Indeed not!" and "I think I can, I think I can". The pictures are also great! My son loves to point at them especially the mountains.

Now he wants us to read him this story everynight!

The story of a train filled with dolls and toys that breaks down and asks for help from other engines. The classic story of a simple struggle to bring the dolls and toys to the "children on the other side of the mountain" is a delight when a little blue engine volunteers to help and "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" is is finally rewarded in the end with "I thought I could, I thought I could", etc. My 2 and 3 year olds' favorite book for many weeks. Enjoy. Dec 1998