Bedtime Stories: The Midnight Ride of Thomas the Tank Engine

This weeks Thomas the Tank Engine story just happened to coincide with an extremely generous gesture from Kit's half-brother. Kit's dad has two kids from a previous marriage, and we always try to pop over to see them whenever he has them for the weekend, they are lovely kids and it's nice to spend time with them. This weekend when we went over his son (who is now 9) generously (without having been asked) gave Kit a set of 30 Thomas the Tank Engine stories which he had from when he was younger. I'd imagine that we'll be having lots more Thomas-related bedtime stories from now on. Thank you big bro!

The Midnight Ride of Thomas the Tank Engine

You all know about Thomas, I'm not going to insult you all by telling you about him! This book isn't just any old Thomas book though. This book is special (and old - our copy was printed in 1996 - I'm not sure you can get it new anymore). This book glows in the dark.

The concept of the book is brilliant. It is a story about Thomas taking a night-time delivery. The glow in the dark ink shows the things that light up his way. The problem is... you can't read a book in the dark can you!! So the publishers are expecting you to get up and turn the lights off every page to show the glow in the dark section, and then turn it back on to read the next page. Needless to say we have yet to take advantage of the glow in the dark feature, I'm not even sure that it works anymore. Either way, it was one of only two Thomas stories that we had, and every toddler seems to love Thomas (whether their parents like it or not) so it was a favourite on the bedtime story list. Now, I think it might have been knocked of the top-five by a whole series of Thomas books, minus glow-in-the-dark features!