The Little Red Train Goes Chuff Chuff Chuff

This board book version of The Little Red Train Goes Chuff Chuff Chuff is billed on the front cover as ‘An adventure with noises’. This is certainly true, from honking to chuff-chuffing. The train loses its driver, who chases the runaway train using different modes of transport over different terrain. Finally train and driver are reunited. The illustrations are from a bird’s-eye view of a whole scene. They are highly detailed with lots of action in each page. The necessary reduction for the board book format means that the images are often very small. In addition, the illustrations with their wealth of detail are perfect for a four-year-old child, whereas the text with its chuff-chuffing and mooing is more suitable for a two-year-old. The overall impression is of confusion, particularly when in the space of one page we move from a James Bond-type helicopter chase to a happy ending at the farm.