Six trains and one baby, and the point of the book is that the wheels are wrong. They are shiny blue patches molded into the board, and a hand goes to them first every time. Behind the red engine on the cover there is a rusty funnel that feels like sandpaper, a corrugated goods wagon, and a bullet train with windows too slippery to be the right one.

It works because so little changes. Fiona Watt writes each page as the same sentence with one new word at the end, which is exactly the structure that lets a pre verbal baby start finishing a line out loud. Rachel Wells keeps the engines side on and enormous, in flat primary color on a clean field, so the shape reads from across a room. The white mouse rides in a cab, on a roof, or beside the rails on every single spread.

Ten board pages, graded from three months, and the first vehicle book most train obsessed toddlers actually get. When the chewing stage passes, the Usborne Wind-Up Train Book and Toy Set is the one they graduate to.