Customer Reviews

Catch Me, Catch Me! (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (Random House Pictureback Reader)

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a train book. Most importantly it is a Thomas the Tank Engine book and to a 3 year old's eyes, nothing is as exciting as a race between two of his steamy friends: little Thomas and mighty Gordon.

While others have noted that the race ends with Thomas winning through trickery, I like to think of it as Thomas winning by *thinking* rather than shear brawn. (What kind of a `real' race is it anyway between a huge steamy and little ole Thomas? Gordon might as well have been racing Toby the steam tram.)

As far as the text is concerned, the rhyme is, as noted elsewhere, awkward. I believe the author would have been better off using 54+ words to get better verse, but I guess that did not fit into the magic scheme of 50.

What does work is the `catch me, catch me, go, go, go" action-rhythm and the nicely drawn pictures. Very addicting to Thomas aficionados.

"Look, a tunnel!
A tunnel for me!
A tunnel Gordon did not see!"

"I may be slow,
You may be fast.
But I am first,
And you are last!"


As we have not begun reading, I can not speak to the effectiveness of the games at the end. Certainly, I agree with the reviewer who stated that the `rectangles' are small and would take awhile to cut out. I would probably just copy those same words on 3x5 cards.

An excellent price for this little book.