2023 - 1970’s Immersion Reading Challenge

The Caboose Who Got Loose by Bill Peet (1971) 48 pages.

READING LEVEL: 4.9 AR POINTS: 0.5

A fairly cute rhyming story! For the sake of progress and your comfortable lifestyle, we’ve got trains, and we need trains. Bill Peet shows kids here in this book how miserable it can be living in a cloud of pollution, even for a caboose…and yes, it sure can be. But, is it better to live alone in a tree where the caboose crashed and landed never to be heard from again? I’m not sure about this ending.

I don’t know. I’m trying to read this without knowing that today, in 2023, they are using climate change as a political scam to get control of the world, pushing us into a one world government. Back in 1971, I probably would have thought this was a cute little book. Today? I might call it brainwashing.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe we would all benefit from living a more mindful and less wasteful lifestyle. It really is just the hypocrisy between the government’s lifestyle and the one they are beginning to force on us. I believe it’s affecting my enjoyment of reading Bill Peet’s books. ( )

This book, The Caboose Who Got Loose, is a fantasy story about a train who wants to settle down and leave it's work. One day the train goes around a bend and the caboose is cut loose from the train. He flies into the forrest where no one can find him. There he finally gets his dream and lives happily ever after.

What a quaint little old book that my son dug out of the shelves at the library. Now, that he'd like a story about a little red caboose was not going to surprise me (caboose was among the first words he ever learned, and his favorite color red), but there's a lot more to this book than I was initially expecting.

First of all, [a:Bill Peet|18821|Bill Peet|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1309163952p2/18821.jpg] is an author/illustrator/animator (for Disney) with an extensive output. And the colored pencil illustrations in this book are immensely satisfying and charming. But the story itself is quite memorable as well. It is somewhat dark (almost too realistic for a picture book at times), but it's very engaging. The text is pretty mature, all in rhyme, and can hold up to countable readings. I was ambivalent about the ending: while Katy may have gotten her wish, the end of the story left me sad. ( )

My kids thought this was okay a long time ago, and now my grandson likes it, too. But what a strange story. Me, I love Bill Peet's drawing style, the bright colors combined with a lurking dark side. He can personify a railroad car - or a house or a barn - with a recognizable emotion. I can relate to a caboose who hates his role in life as a follower bringing up the rear of an indifferent train, wishing to be free. I cheer for his escape. What I can't quite accept in this silly story is the outcome. I wish the caboose had found meaningful work, or a loving relationship, or a way to feel dignity in the role to which he was born. Something psychologically satisfying. Something other than that a caboose would be happy spending the rest of its days stuck high in the air between two spruce trees.
But that's how it ends. ( )

Summary: This is the story of a caboose that constantly complains of the travels she must make and dreams of a life of peace and relaxation. While at a freight yard she encounters a lonely shack who wishes to be a caboose. After their conversation she realizes she is lucky to be traveling the world instead of being stuck somewhere in a crummy place. On her next travel she get knocked loose is goes flying down a hill where she gets caught between two trees and no one ever finds her excpet the playing squirrel and singing birds.

Personal Thoughts: I think this is a good book for children to relate to. It is fun and exciting and full of adventure. It also teaches personal value.

Classroom Extensions:
1. Finding joy in each day no matter where life takes you
2. learning how to expand imaginations