I showed them the map on the inside cover, illustrating how the track was built in two parts that met in Promontory Summit in Utah. I told the kids we were going to go on a train ride. Floca also portrays visually the rickety terror of the narrow wooden trestles, the darkness of the rough-hewn mountain tunnels, and the dangers that could befall a train with a careless engineer.īy the time I read to the second grade, I was actually looking forward to sharing the journey. All four classes were gleefully disgusted by the idea that the toilet dumped out onto the tracks, and that you could tell if a switchman (the man responsible for hitching the engine to the train) was new to his job if he still had all his fingers.

Amid all the facts about the train and the railroad, he throws in little details to grab kids’ attention. I was relieved to find that it did.įloca knows his audience well. It’s too long to share with the toddler and preschool groups I usually read to, so I had never read it aloud to a group, and wasn’t sure if it would hold the kids’ interest. Floca packs an enormous amount of detail into the text, including how the railroad was built, how the train was operated, and the range of landscapes it passed through. It’s a mini-history lesson that recreates a trip from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California by train in the 19th century. I was especially nervous about reading the Medal winner, Locomotive by Brian Floca. But a promise is a promise, so I shared all four books with both classes that day, and with two classes of second graders later that week. Sharing wordless books with a large group is a bit of a challenge. Yes, they were all wonderful choices, but the winning book was extremely wordy, and all three of the honor books were wordless, or nearly wordless. I’ll confess that I was a little dismayed by the results. I was most curious about the Caldecott Medal because I had promised to read the medal winner and the Caldecott honor books to two classes of third graders later that morning. This past Monday, I woke up early to catch the ALA Youth Media Awards online.

Mr wuffles