Bullet Trains

Seedlings

by Kate Riggs

This title tells us all about bullet trains, looking at how they are built, powered, and used around the world. This is an eye-catching series about speedy machines with clear, manageable text and big, attractive images.

Genres: Picture Books, Trains

24 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Rachel S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple introduction.

[Annawade Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bullet Trains" by Kate Riggs is a informational text book that explains how a specific type of train called bullet train functions and what it looks like. It tells the reader the trains are really fast, take people from place to place, describes a bullet train and it compromised of about 16 cars. The bullet train runs on smooth tracks where a conductor drives a train and the trains can go on land and underwater. The train also makes stop at a place called the train station. If this informations seems simple to you, it is because this book is for very young beginning readers not more than age 7. I give this book four stars because it's a helpful book when introducing children to informational text and showing how information is organized.

Although the information and text in this book is so simple it has all the features of what a good an informational text in picture book format should be. It is organized into about nine short chapters or segments where each segment is about one sentence long. Each word that children may not know is shown in a different text color and then referenced to at the end where the definition is provided. For example, the definition of conduction is featured at that back which says "the person in charge of a train". The book is organized in page numbers possibly only to help children get ready for more complex informational texts. The title, table of contents, sentence structure, glossary at the back and websites that are related to trains help children understand the differences in this genre as oppose to fictional stories. I think the most useful part of the book is the diagram that labels all the parts of the train over a picture of it. The reader learns where the tool compartment is, the wheel, and the signal lights. For these reasons, this book is a good example of a high quality informational text for young readers.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice pictures, but the information was pretty slight, even for something at this level.