暴走機関車, in Which I Read My First Book in Japanese

What a fantastic week of reading!  As this will be my last week where I will be free this summer, I was happy to knock a bunch of 1001 CBYMRBYGUs off my list.

I loved them all. The fantastic Shirley Hughes appeared again, this time with Bathwater's Hot, a little book of opposites. Hughes knows little kids. Her books are ideal for the very young.

And then there was Sleep Well, Little Bear. Poetry, pure poetry, and with illustrations that seemed to lull me to sleep.

Dusty Wants to Help, and you know before you even open the book that this is not going to turn out well.

Baby Bear and Grandbear have a fantastic time together, whatever they do, so I adored reading the whole John Prater Baby Bear collection.

Are We There Yet? took me off to Australia, and I loved hearing little side comments about all of Australia's landmarks from a precocious child.

Mister Magnolia...I knew Quentin Blake could draw, but who knew that he can tell a tale, too.

The Sea Monster has pictures that are so realistic that the fantastic elements of the story seem even more fantastic and cool.

The Boy Who Grew Flowers takes the subject of special needs children and turns it on its head; who wouldn't want to be special needs after reading this book? It's a glorious gift!

Little Mole finds someone has pooped on his head and goes off in search of the culprit. I'm eager to share this with my nephew.

And then there is 暴走機関車. Yes, I said 暴走機関車. Here's how it happened that I read my first book in Japanese:  Oddly, this book that I can find all over Great Britain is not available locally...except in Japanese. And I mean totally in Japanese. No English. I could not even resort to typing the text into Google Translator this time. The pictures, fortunately, told the story well. Just wish I could have read the story in English. Or Spanish. Or even French!

For full reviews of all I read this week...