I love this book!  I have loved this book for over 20 years!  I look forward to reading it aloud every year, and I am using this opportunity with the 25^th Anniversary Edition available to spread the word to anyone who does not have this book or is unfamiliar with this book needs to get this book.  It makes a fabulous picture book read aloud for older students, with opportunities to discuss inference and prejudice.  Van Allsburg’s illustrative style does an amazing job of setting the mood and tone of the story.  It makes a great read aloud around Halloween, without being blatantly a Halloween story.  The twist at the end is implied without being explicitly spelled out, allowing readers to put the pieces together for themselves.  And it leaves you cheering for the main character.

The illustrations are rich in blues and purples and greens, a palate that seems appropriate for a bedtime story, and full of details that give the characters personality and give the reader something to study.  The rhyming text describes a variety of troubles the Goodnight Train encounters on its journey which threaten to wake the sleepers aboard, but each challenge is met by the crew, with the refrain of, “Chugga! Chugga! Shhhhhhh! Shhhhhhh!” signaling that calm has once again been restored, and the sleepers are once again slumbering peacefully.

The cotton-candy sweet illustrations are full of warm and fuzzy texture and pastel colors that will be a certain lure to some small children.  The message  is a positive one, if somewhat pedantically delivered.  When a young unicorn is feeling blue over not believing she has any special power, her birdie friend tells her to cheer up, believe in magic, and follow her heart.  Throughout the story this uncertain unicorn encounters several friends who are struggling with applying their special powers, and shares Birdie’s words of wisdom, encouraging each to success. In the end all those she encouraged come to thank her for her gift of friendship, and just as she laments again that she wished she knew what her power was, they reminder her about what she told them, and a rainbow sprouts from her horn as they all cheer that the very best magic of all was believing in themselves.

A fabulous companion book to O’Brien’s other book, I Am New Here.  We see the same characters in the same situations, facing the struggles of being new in school in a place where you don’t speak the language or know anyone, and things all seem different.  But this time the story is told from the perspectives of the children who have been at the school and have been asked to welcome the newcomers.  We see how they want to be welcoming but are unsure what to do, and how they overcome their uncertainties to make new friends.

I am a fan of wordless books, and this one offers many details for the children to hunt out and share what they notice.  The story begins in black and white and gray drawings of a young girl getting up to start her day when everything seems to be going wrong, from mom running late to brother throwing food to getting splashed by a puddle on the way to school in the rain.  And she’s not the only one having a rough day:  around the neighborhood we see someone falling off his bike, another facing a flat tire, a mom dealing with a crying baby, etc. After a thoroughly boring day at school, she notices a butterfly on the way home (the first spot of bright color in the book), and when she follows it, it leads her to a bright pink pair of glasses laying on the ground.  When she puts the glasses on, we turn the page to see them turning her world to one full of bright colors, where everything seems to be going great for everyone.  She wears the glasses for a day, seeing the world in a whole new way, but on the way home the next day she drops the glasses into a stream in the park.  At first she turns all gray again with a look of dismay upon her face, but then she looks around and notices that even without these glasses her world is still full of joy and good things and color (if perhaps not quite the same Technicolor intensity as with the glasses).  The final page turn shows another black and white a gray drawing of a boy looking glum as he comes across the magic pink glasses where they have drifted ashore.

We tend to think of “fake news” and doctored photos as a modern-day phenomenon, a product of the internet and digital photography, but this book tells the tale of two young girls during WWI who used an early camera to convince their parents to believe their tales about the fairies they entertained when playing by the local brook.  Things snowballed, and before they knew it, their photos had become a worldwide sensation, being discussed and evaluated by famous people, including Arthur Conan Doyle.  We so often skip reading Authors’ notes, but in this case, the note in the back of the book is one of the most valuable parts of the book, adding context and perspective, pointing out similar issues between this prank of the past and the modern-day need for discerning truth in what we view and read.  The illustrations are very much in keeping with the era of the story, thus inviting readers in and providing a sense of setting for young readers unfamiliar with the time.

The main body of the book is written in an almost poetic manner, with rich illustrations that evoke the mood and sentiment of life in an ancient wilderness.  It tells about the life cycle of a giant redwood tree, but more as a story than as informational text, yet it is still full of scientific explanations.  Toward the end, it also shares the historical/sociological aspects of work that has been done to protect the Giant Redwoods from over harvesting.  Several pages in the back are dedicated to “Facts about Coast Redwoods,” expounding in a more expository manner to some of the phrases used earlier in the tree’s story, adding more information/details.

It’s a straightforward text for young readers that provides the basics of how seeing-eye dogs are trained and what kind of services they provide.  It explains for children that when such a dog is in its harness it is in work mode, and they should not attempt to pet or play with it.  It describes some of the commands dogs learn, as well as some cues they may give to their owner.  Because it is a text intended for young readers, the depth of information is somewhat limited, as there are only a few sentences, in large font, per page.  The text on each page is supported by full-color photos on the opposing page.  The book contains all your basic non-fiction text features, including table of context, index, etc. I wish they had kept with the more traditional academic vocabulary of “Glossary,” instead of “Words to keep” though.  Also, although there is another book in this series dedicated to other service animals, I thought it would have been nice in this book to include a sentence or two explaining that Guiding for the blind is only one type of service dogs (and other animals) have been trained to do.

It’s fine I guess, but it wasn’t my favorite of similar type books.  This one seemed more concerned with being cute than with being informative, and I’m not sure their cuteness attempts always hit the mark. When the book is explaining that carrots aren’t really that good for rabbits, and could give them cavities, I don’t know how many modern kids are going to understand the point of the illustration of a rabbit with a kerchief tied around its face.  It makes the bold statement at the beginning of the book that no matter what kind of pet we have they love us, but is that really true?  I know dogs and cats can develop relationships of affection with their owners, but how does one know if a tarantula or a gold fish loves one?

A sturdy binding and some nice color photos are not enough to be worth almost twenty dollars. With only one or two brief sentences per page, this book is so thin on information, both its audience and purpose are severely limited.