May 3, 2012
Our Best Book of the Library Haul: Katy the Caboose Who Got Loose by Bill Peet
I’m sure I’m not the only person who has read this book at least twice daily all week long, but still, the experience has granted me a certain authority to say that it’s one of the finest train books out there– even better than Virginia Lee Burton’s Choo Choo and Don Freeman’s Chuggy. The Caboose Who Got Loose by Bill Peet is about a delightful red caboose called Katy who longs for quiet and stability, for the end of a life of rumbling, smoke, and dark tunnels. Her wish comes true in the most surprising way, but not until the very end of the story. Before it does, there is plenty of train track adventures, rumbling through field and town, passing houses with faces as charming as Katy’s own, and perilous pulls around mountain ledges. Our resident train fiend loved this one, and I did too, mostly because I’m a sucker for rhyming couplets every time. If there is a book I have to read twice daily for a week, it always goes down so much better in verse.
