Subway Hardcover – Picture Book, May 18, 2010

Kid is obsessed with the subway so this is the perfect book! Wish it was a board book to avoid ripped pages, but otherwise it’s perfect!

I bought this book already twice! This time for my second son, since it was a favorite book for my first one and the one we got was in a poor shape after relentless times of reading and playing with. Let see if the tradition continues with my third son, who is an infant now.It’s a must for every kid interested in NYC Subway!

Written and illustrated by the talented Christoph Neiman, "Subway" is a book that you must own if you live with kids in New York City. His iconic illustration style has turned the subway system into a learning adventure for my daughter. She can't read yet but she loves identifying the wayfinding signage letters/numbers and matching them to the real subway map. The rhythmic storyline also keeps her engaged and she even repeats some of the lines from the book while we're on our real life subway journeys.

We took our 2- and 5-year-olds to the city a few months ago, and they’ve been reading this one ever since. Bright colors, good rhymes, not too much text (lol), and a great tour of the NYC subway. We love it!

We gave my three-year-old son a copy of this as a holiday present. He's a train enthusiast and, as New Yorkers, we ride the subway together frequently, but I was still surprised at how much he took to this book to the exclusion of everything else on his shelf. He's asked for it at bedtime every day since then (i.e. for the past two weeks!). The hardcover edition features a dust jacket that he loves to spread out on the bed, tracing the various lines. While the text and illustrations are very simple, they are also very clever -- the schematic of Times Square is actually quite accurate. Niemann has a whimsical view of the world that comes through brilliantly in little details.

I am a native New Yorker now living in NJ. My son and I used to ride the subway every weekend to visit my mom in Queens. He LOVES this book. His favorite line is the 7 train. Now especially with the quarantine, reading this before bed has special meaning. Wish there were more NYC subway specific books like this!

Okay, this book has a very limited market. If you don't live in NYC or aren't familiar with the City's subway system, then I doubt you or your children will see the appeal. On the other hand, if you have a son like mine, who loves to ride the rails and look at the subway map, then this book is fantastic.The text is simple and the rhymes are a bit weak in spots, but the artwork is satisfyingly impressionistic with plenty of color contrast on a generally black background. Most importantly, the subway line symbols are all there as well as some of the routes, which my son loves to point out to me.The fact of the matter is, my son wants this book read to him every night. To me, that's high praise indeed.

As a 2's and 3's teacher in New York City, I love this book! I purchased it to use during a transportation unit. My students loved it and literally begged me to read it on a daily basis! Needless to say, I now have it memorized! It is a very cute, rhyming, and accurate description of the NYC subway system. It also incidentally builds in opportunities to work on skills such as colors, numbers, and shapes (to name a few). Highly recommended.