Oh the dalliances I’m having with Ladybird Tuesday! It comes back every now and again, before vanishing without even a goodbye. I’m sincerely hoping that this will be the start of a proper return, but bearing in mind how late in the day I’m finally getting round to writing this post this Tuesday, you never know…
But enough of that and on to the book itself.
Now Master C is more than a little obsessed with trains right now. In fact, I’m not even sure that “obsessed” is a strong enough word to be using. His whole day seems to revolve around either talking about trains, playing with trains, asking to go on trains, or looking at pictures of trains in the various train related books that he’s been collecting. There have been numerous days out recently with a train theme, and yet more are planned. It therefore seemed somewhat appropriate to re-start Ladybird Tuesday with a book on, you guessed it, trains.
The Ladybird Leaders series (series 737) was developed to be a series of first information books for children, and that’s very much what Trains does. Starting with the history of trains and Stephenson’s Rocket the book goes on to look at the development of steam, as well as diesel and electric locomotives.
There are pages on underground trains, the Post Office mail train (which excitingly is soon going to start running again as part of the new Postal Museum), rack and pinion trains and much more. Master C was in his absolute element going through it with me this afternoon. His squeal of delight when he saw the “trains that carry cars” page was quite something!
Originally published in 1974, the book is obviously quite dated now, but my inner geek rather likes spotting all the BR logos in it. I also laughed somewhat when explaining to Master C that the “modern signal box” that it features isn’t really all that modern anymore.
For someone like Master C though, this book is absolutely perfect. He got so excited to see all the different train types and pictures of things he recognised that he didn’t really notice or care about what year it was published. The only thing is that I need to go and swot up on all things train related as I’m not sure I can manage to answer all his questions anymore!
If you want to get your hands on a copy of Ladybird Leaders – Trains there seem to be a few on sale here (affiliate link) at varying prices.
It sounds as if he will be thrilled with his own copy!!