Shannon Phillips

This is such a great idea! I’d love to do something similar with Robin and Davy when they’re older.

Right now Robin and I are reading the original Thomas the Tank Engine stories by the Rev. W. Awdry. They’re good! There’s a lot of genuine railway geekery that comes through, and I learned in the preface that Rev. Awdry wrote the first stories for his son, when the boy was the same age that Robin is now. So it’s not surprising that Robin really likes the book. It’s big and heavy for him, but he’ll often toddle around with it clutched to his chest.

We’re also reading a lovely book that Nonna and Pappy sent, Full Steam Ahead! by the wonderfully-named Benedict Blathwayt. It’s about the adventures of Duffy Driver and his little red train, which Robin identifies as “James.” (James is his favorite Thomas character, and also red.) There are lots of “Little Red Train” books, apparently, and the big draw for this series is the artwork. The pictures are huge and wonderfully intricate. Robin loves picking out the sheep, birds, doggies, babies, balls and other little pieces of the background action.

Oddly enough, even though these are hardback books with regular paper pages, Robin seems to be gentler on them than he is with his board books. Our collection of board books is increasingly ratty, and some of them Robin has actually ripped in half. But so far both the Thomas book and the Little Red Train book are undamaged. I wonder if that’s just an accident of them being relatively new additions to his library, or if it actually has to do with how much he likes them?