Long Train: 101 Cars on the Track

Rating:
Summary: Great counting book for train lovers.
Review: A great lift the flap book for train lovers! Plus it teaches counting skills 1-100! I'm going to buy another one!

Rating:
Summary: Great counting book for train lovers.
Review: A great lift the flap book for train lovers! Plus it teaches counting skills 1-100! I'm going to buy another one!

Rating:
Summary: worst children's train book I've purchased
Review: This is my least favorite train book for children. When I ordered it online I thought it would be a fun book with many lift-the-flaps and I hoped it would help teach counting to 101 to my children. What a disappointment.

This is the first lift-the-flap book that I've seen that has two storylines. There is one storyline that is in between the flaps and is not related to the flaps in any way, and a totally different story going on under the flaps. The two cannot be read together at all. To make sense one must first read the story on the pages, ignoring the flaps. Then go back and lift each flap and read the words inside the flap and go through all 101 cars to read that story. The text under the flaps is much, much longer and more detailed than the other "story". There actually is no real plot to the words on the pages, it is mostly train sounds and disjointed phrases such as "can't go back".

I don't feel this teaches counting, as there are not a certain number of objects matched to the number, for example there are not 8 of some object than the number 8. The outer flap has a number on it then the text inside doesn't relate to that number, for example the flap number 30 says, "got Persian rugs". Every inner flap says "got" and then something. The flaps are so small they don't allow for showing the number of objects represented by the number nor does the text even say "got 30 Persian rugs" (which would have made sense to me). There are many varied and unrelated objects under the flaps, the text rhymes--sometimes. An example of a good rhyme (albeit goofy and probably not understood by young children) is "got CD, DVD, and movies, got party jackets for the smoothies, got 70s wigs for the groovies" (under 3 flaps). An example of a bad rhyme is " got cables that stretch for miles and miles, got telephones, faxes, and little mobiles". The only thing that is truly counted is if you count each train in the book, which would be a different exercise than reading the story on the page, or the story under the flaps and it is unrelated to lifting the flaps.

If this review sounds confusing, I apologize but this is the strangest and least organized book I've ever seen written for children. It seems to make no sense and is very jumbled up and a mess and hard to explain. I plan to get rid of this book as I dread it when my children ask to read it, and to inspire a love of reading in them I feel I should be a happy and enthusiastic reader, and I feel the books should be only good or exceptional in quality, and this is neither.