All Aboard! The Sesame Street Subway is rabbit hole, Extend-A-Book magic

For a time period in every kid’s life, they’ll hopefully be best friends with a book. For many of those on the younger spectrum, it’ll happen when they’re in pre-k or even younger. It’s those board books that they’re able to wrangle with their evolving hands. When they get slightly older the pages get skinnier and are combined with more content. Abrams Extend-A-Book has created a new category that overlaps those two and created an entirely new area. All Aboard! The Sesame Street Subway is an Extend-A-Book that will make the eyes of those pre-k kids bug out as if they’re tasting chocolate ice cream for the first time.

That’s because it’s a board book that folds out to over three feet long, and has interactive, fold-out elements. All Aboard! The Sesame Street Train can also be viewed as a seek-and-find book due to the fact because that there are dozens of things that young readers can see, and they’re provided with a prompt to look for something.

Even from the book’s cover, those ages will know that this is something special. When they move the cover to the left and right, even just a little bit, the cut-through elements seem to dance off of the page. Then, once they open up the book, they’ll find themselves looking at subway cars one and two. Through the subway’s windows, they’ll see a handful of different Sesame Street. Those astute young readers will recognize Abby as the one constant that’s visible in both cars.

On each page, you turn up the cut-through pages to reveal the insides of the subway car. On the back of that page, you’ll see some read-to-me text that sets up the seek-and-find aspects. It tells us who is in which car, points out a couple of the details, and most importantly lets us know that Abby’s library card is missing. In the first car, she’s got her hands out in an inquisitive manner as if she’s looking for something.  In the second car, she’s looking through a cookie box with a blue-haired monster nearby.

The regulars from Sesame Street are never far behind as turn any page in the book. As pages three and four are unfolded-both out and up, young readers will go back to look again at what they saw. When young readers are finished folding out all of the books, the pages stretch out to just past three feet. The subway cars are cool and those ages will laugh at the images. All of a sudden you’ll see a light bulk go off above their heads and they’ll turn the book over.

The panoramic Sesame Street images are on both sides of the pages. On the opposite sides of the subway diorama is a city scene that features iconic Sesame Street characters sauntering down a typical big city street.

Having said all of that, here’s the surprising part about Abrams Extend-A-Book: All Aboard! The Sesame Street Subway, it’s user-friendly. There are instructions on how to interact with the book when you open it and look to the left. In theory, any book that has instructions on how to use it is complicated. This book is very user-friendly and will be engaging for any pre-k kid through first grade. Those younger ages might need to be shown how to use it once, but they’ll be fine after that.

File under: bang for the buck. This is where the high quality of the book’s design comes into play. Because this is a hybrid of sorts between a board book and an interactive book, you don’t need to worry about young students ripping the book from cover to cover. It’s durable, engaging, and entertaining in a way that will entice readers to spend hours with it, even if they’re tempted by more electronic devices.

Abrams Extend-A-Book, All Aboard! The Sesame Street Subway is illustrated by Andrew Kolb and written by Nichole Mara and is available on Abrams Appleseed, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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