Choo Choo Board Book

Chug Along Book for Chubby Hands

I love these Petr Horacek books, like Choo Choo. Fortunately, so do my kids. Both my boys have been obsessed with this one in particular. We first saw Choo Choo at a friend’s house and every time we visited, my infant couldn’t put it down. I finally bought him his own copy, and his obsession only intensified. My youngest has also loved reading this book over and over again.

Each page spread has a cut out of some sort, so the pages have irregular shapes allowing the next page to peek through. The pages have one prepositional phrase describing the train’s location (over the bridge, into the tunnel, etc.) and an appropriate noise to accompany the action, like choo choo, clack clack, or rumble rumble. I think in part the repeated noises delighted my kids, but the artistic illustrations and bright colors didn’t hurt.

We read it so many times my husband and I could quote the noises from each page. We started doing the appropriate noise from the book every time we went through a tunnel or otherwise replicated an action from the book.

When another friend with an older child got rid of some board books, I snagged another title from the same author illustrator. While Beep Beep hasn’t had the same run of popularity in our household, I think that’s because the kids were much older when we acquired it. It doesn’t have quite as many irregular shaped pages, and the words don’t repeat as much, either, though, so both those things could be contributing factors.