TOOT! TOOT!

The pictures are pallid and stiff and, except for the small size of the detail, reminiscent of Rockwell's illustrations for very young concept books. The story is a clumsy combination of the make-believe and the fictively real. Laurence, playing with his model trains, ""imagines"" walking over to the station, waving at the engineer, and boarding the train; aboard, he's reminded of things he did on visits to his grandparents' farm (each of which, with its picture, is a separate vignette); midway, his mother tries to call him for dinner, and she returns impatiently just before--in imagination--he gets to his grandparents' station. But when he reaches the dining room-lo and behold!--""Grandma and Grandpa were sitting at the table."" (And they want him to come for a visit on the train.) It's not even really wish-fulfillment--Laurence was perfectly happy pretending. It just devalues imagination and insults the intelligence.