Toyland Express (for the Train Lover in Your Life)

Am I allowed to talk about Christmas now!? Am I?! Am I!? Because I'm gonna anyway, but I just thought I'd ask.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving trip to Texas, spending time with my side of the family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and Nana! Many good memories were made. What did you and your family end up doing for the holiday? I hope it was a good one for you!

And now? We're back and getting ready for Christmas. We're doing as we did last year and are wrapping up books for each of the boys (age 5 and 2) to open each day as we countdown to Christmas. We have a fun little Christmas book library but I'm as pleased as punch to add the following to our stack:




Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express is a fairly recent release from Scholastic Books. I had not yet been exposed to their Can You See What I See? series by Walter Wick (it's like the I Spy books) but I can imagine these will be huge hits in our household. What I didn't quite clue in on when I accepted this particular title for review was that it had to do with TRAINS. (I've mentioned how much Bookworm2 loves trains before, haven't I?) You should have seen his face when we opened the package that this book arrived in. OH joy and bliss and happiness!!! (I let him look through it and then I snatched it away to wrap up for our Christmas book stack.)

Every single page in this book is an I Spy game which features a train set. There is a page spread for a circus train, a Birthday train, a train on a mountain pass and one in a store window, among others. Trains, trains, trains! It is simply fabulous. Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express hit the spot with us in a marvelous way and I envision many happy moments spent cuddled up looking through this book together during the month of December.

Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express is on Scholastic's List of recommended Christmas reads and, for what it's worth, it's on mine as well. Especially if you have a train lover in your midst. Spectacular and exciting. (I'm not exaggerating. This is just one of those perfect fun Christmas books for our family!)

I was a little worried about having to read The Polar Express 52 million times this season. Maybe we can break that number up a bit with this new title.

Thanks to Scholastic for sending a copy of this title our way. We love it!

*****

Another book which Scholastic is recommending for the holiday season is War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo. I'm definitely interested in reading that particular story as it is also being released on the big screen in December. We saw the previews for this one and thought it looked promising! What I didn't realize is that it was based on a book.

Looking forward to reading/watching that one as well!