A Cow on the Line and Other Thomas the Tank Engine Stories

Rating:
Summary: An excellent choice for "Thomas the Tank Engine" fans.
Review: Do you know of a young child who enjoys the "Thomas the Tank Engine" segments on the PBS show "Shining Time Station"? Does this child enjoy having stories read to him or her? Then "A Cow on the Line" would be a great addition to the child's library.This book features 42 photographs from the Britt Allcroft video productions on its 32 pages. All photos are quite clear. The pictures are well placed to keep the attention of young listeners. Because the text could serve as a script for the television segments, this is a "read to me" book. A strong third- or fourth-grade reader could handle the text, but the sentence structure and phrasing is beyond beginning readers. As listed above, the book contains 4 stories. Only one features Thomas -- Percy and Edward take the spotlight in this book. The stories are true to the nature of the "Thomas" series and are a delight to read. And if your child is like the two year old in our house, he or she won't even mind if you don't sound like Ringo Starr or George Carlin (the video narrators) when you read the stories!

Rating:
Summary: Kind of fragmented.
Review: The stories are good stories,
the pictures are neat, and
the characters are interesting.

This book, though, tends to be written
in a sort of fragmentary style,
leaving out a bit much, and often
not giving a good idea of why one
picture follows another.

On the other hand, my 3-year-old likes
it, like all her other Thomas books.

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete, dis-jointed, unclear
Review: This is a pretty bad book. It's the 2nd Thomas book, I've ever bought - and I hope most of them aren't as bad as this one. There are several stories in this book, all of which seem to have chunks of the stories missing. It is very dis-jointed. The illustrations (which are photos of the train models) do not help the reader to figure out what is going on in the story. The words(vocabulary) that are used seem to be somewhat unusual (perhaps - they are british terms) - which do not help. This book is not worth the money or the effort. Although my 3 year son doesn't seen to mind too much, it certainly is not his favorite book. Besides, it is frustrating to the adults that have to endure reading this to the children over and over.