Joshua Prince

I liked this book for three reasons. The first was the way Joshua Prince could create the setting through strong descriptive words. For example, the book begins with “Well, I saw an ant in the parking lot. The sun was high, the pavement hot. He was walking along, not caring a jot, a little blank ant in a big black plot.” From this same excerpt you can see the fun rhyming scheme that many audience members would also enjoy. This book is action-packed and very suspenseful – it has the audience on the edge of their seats wanting to know what is going to happen as the any walks though the parking lot and a car starts heading straight towards it. The ticket matron sees everything that’s about to happen and hatches a plan to help save the ant. The bright, detailed illustrations fill up every page and also help create the setting and give a visualization to the words on the page. This book is a fun read and very well done!… (mais)

I had mixed feelings about this book after reading it. One thing I did like about this story was that the words were predictable after talking about the tracks it would say “clickity-clack”. This allowed for the reader to follow along easily, especially if they are being read to. The story also built suspense for the reader, they did not know if Railroad Jack would be able to stop the train before it hit the ant. I did not like that the big idea was not clearly recognizable. The story had to be read multiple times to find out that the big idea was to not stop until you get what you’re working towards. The ant in the story was looking for food, but he could not find it. By the end of the story he found it in Railroad Jacks lunchbox.… (mais)