Oi! Get Off Our Train

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A welcome republication of a thirty-year old modern classic from a prolific author and illustrator who deservedly has been nominated for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen award. e. Mr Gumpy's Outing, Courtney, or Avocado Baby) or his occasional projects for texts not his own ( The Wind in the Willows, the now sadly out of print Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). I understand that the author is trying to raise awareness about environmental change and how animals are affected, but the text felt so forced and made me roll my eyes.

The characters are all endangered animals, attempting to board a little boy’s fantasy dream train as he chugs through different landscapes, playing with his pyjama-case dog.Collect some small cardboard boxes and tubes and stick them together with glue or tape to make a toy train together. For example the elephant says "Someone is coming to cut off my tusks, and soon there will be none of us left. It turned to be about something even better than I’d anticipated, and there’s a wonderful twist ending I did not expect at all. Teachers and parents can get a lot of traction from this topic via creatively extending the concept of being kind to our planet. I found this book funny and informative however, it does not have the most interesting storyline as it is quite a short, simple book.

The core theme is definitely about animals and the destruction of habitats though, so it would lend itself to either a discussion or Science topic about this matter. This is effective as not an in your face 'humans are terrible' but could allow a child to realise this is not right - animals don't deserve to be treated that way and understand ways in which this could be improved. Parents might like to read through this first, some children might find the descriptions of what is happening to these endangered animals too much and I think children can be burdened too much with the environmental disasters that are adults doing but I'm glad to see a children's book with a kind environmental message.John Burningham has since written and illustrated over thirty picture books, that have been translated and distributed all over the world. This book alone opens the doors to many meaningful teaching and learning opportunities as children can learn about species in science as well as endangerment and conservation.