Sunday, April 1, 2012

A book of train mazes


Casey Loves Trains (And Likes Mazes)
 is now available at Amazon.com.



This book is the result of a request from my daughter, who has a son who loves trains, to do a maze book about trains. My initial reaction was that I could not do such a book. Trains are one dimensional while mazes are two dimensional. After a bit of thought, I figured out how to manage the project.

There are some mazes that are clearly train related. In the maze below, you have to stay on cars with hearts.
 Rails can be used to form mazes in several ways.

 Obey the semaphores in this maze.
 There are several ways to make mazes of tracks, and also of ties and spikes.
 But if you want a book that is more than a few pages long, and Casey Loves Trains is over 100 pages, you have to find ways to bring other sorts of things into the story line. Like elephants.
 Or horses.
 Or cows.
(I like tessellations.)

 And dinosaurs.
How did all these things get into a book about trains? The mazes illustrate the story of a trip that a young boy takes on a train. While he is on the train, he sees and does many things.

It is a book designed to appeal to young people who love trains (as well as dinosaurs) and who like mazes.