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Lisa Findlay's Thomas Gets His Own Branch Line is a Sodor story for 6 year olds about a cheeky little engine who learns everything the hard way.
Thomas arrives at the Big Station with no experience, not very many manners and a firm belief that no engine works as hard as he does. He plays tricks. He rushes jobs and makes careless mistakes.
His first trick here is a beauty. He hides behind a tree, steams out as Gordon comes chugging into the yard, and tips a whole truck of cement over Gordon's wheels.
Thomas laughs and laughs. Then Sir Topham Hatt comes marching up with a face like thunder, because Gordon was supposed to be pulling the Express.
That's the shape of the book. Thomas wants a bigger job than shunting coaches about the yard. He gets his chances one at a time and he fumbles every one of them in a different, extremely recognisable way.
He pulls out of a station without waiting for the all clear and gets all the way to a signal before anybody notices he has left the coaches behind.
He races a bus called Bertie to prove that trains are faster, wins, and realises he hasn't let a single passenger off.
What's nice about reading it is that these are exactly a six year old's mistakes. Going too fast. Not listening to the grown-up standing right next to you. Being so set on winning that you forget what you were meant to be doing in the first place.
And nobody is ever unkind about it. Bertie helps him out even after Thomas has been rude to him, because "we all help each other on the Island of Sodor". Sir Topham Hatt tells him off, then tells him what he did well, every time.
Two practical notes. This is a retelling written for newer readers rather than the Reverend Awdry's original text, so the prose is simpler and the moral is closer to the surface. And it uses the name Sir Topham Hatt throughout, which will surprise anyone at home who grew up with the Fat Controller.
If you've got a reader who likes being told they were right about something, Thomas being right and then immediately being wrong again is a good engine for a story.
For another day on the railway, Thomas and the Big Big Bridge opens a new line through the mountains. The bridge is so high you can barely see the ground, and every big engine on Sodor is quietly hoping somebody else goes first.
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