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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To ask ds to choose a different book as I will GO MAD if I have to read another blardy Thomas related story?

93 replies

beansprout · 20/01/2008 21:18

I just can't bear them and of course they are ds's favourite thing. They aren't even that nice, just a load of male egos competing and being unkind to each other plus they are too long and, and, I could go on.

I will read a few each day but always get to the point where I say, "can we read something else, something that isn't a train book, how about x, y and z?" I know I shouldn't dictate his reading choices but I am getting to the point where I just can't bear them!

AIBU?

OP posts:

krang · 21/01/2008 19:34

I HATE them.

I hate the fecking slimey fawning obeisance to the Fat Controller. "Oh, Sir!"

I hate the way the only female characters are fecking carriages, for Pete's sake.

I hate the implicit union-busting message when the engines are made to feel really bad about going on strike.

I hate EVERYTHING about Thomas the Tank Engine and most of all I hate my MIL for buying them for my son.

That feels...better.

Ubergeekian · 21/01/2008 19:40

Don't worry, too much, snowleopard, Scruffey the truck is a thoroughly bad piece of work and fully deserves his dismemberment!

I arranged for the Reverend Wilbert himself to speak to my uni railway society when I was a student. He was a delightful and gentle man, who used to take great pleasure in writing to young readers who had spotted oddities or inconsistencies in the stories with explanations. Sometime these made it into later stories (Gordon's rebuilt at Crewe changed the shape of his buffers).

Yes, very much of their time ... but The Boy has been listening to them (mainly "Tank Engine Thomas Again") since he was 15 months old and they really do seem to grab his attention.

lucyellensmum · 21/01/2008 21:21

I have just read Jemima-puddle-duck to DD! I am traumatised!! It is a fecking horror story!! This after i commented that these are such lovely stories to DP after reading Tom Kitten!! I should have known really, when Tom Kitten's mum SMACKED him !!

lucyellensmum · 21/01/2008 21:23

edam, you do make an excellent point there about it being "of its time" - i guess in "trying" to maintain the original atmosphere today's writers have gone a bit off the rails!

booge · 21/01/2008 21:35

I love Thomas, well not Thomas really, Gordon is my favourite especially when he's being pompous. I like Ringo reading Thomas but not the new more moralistic version, it's a bit twee.

booge · 21/01/2008 21:36

lucyellensmum, I know what you mean about Jemima Puddleduck, we read Jeremy Fisher tonight and that's no less scary.

HarrietTheSpy · 21/01/2008 21:44

lucyellen's Mum:

Tom Kitten and the 'smacking' - I know!!!

Read Curious George for some more retro fun. The original story has the man in the yellow hat kidnapping the monkey from Africa and "doing the kind thing" by locking him up in a NY zoo toute de suite. Pretty clear why there were some, um, 'minor edits' before the DVD came out.

HarrietTheSpy · 21/01/2008 21:44

lucyellen's Mum:

Tom Kitten and the 'smacking' - I know!!!

lucyellensmum · 21/01/2008 21:59

peter rabbits the same, but at least that has a happy ending FGS

lucyellensmum · 21/01/2008 21:59

peter rabbits the same, but at least that has a happy ending FGS

edam · 21/01/2008 22:08

Oh, that's a lovely, Ubergeek. He was a friend of my father's, have heard lots of nice things about him. Good to have it confirmed from another source!

Snowleopard, don't worry, Prince (aka Duke, I think, in the story) was found in the end and was pulling trains on the Ffestiniog last time I checked. He did spend a few years sitting on a plinth outside the Harbour station, though, that always made me very sad.

MrsWeasley · 21/01/2008 22:09

Beansprout: you mentioned dictating his reading choices well I would see it as broadening his horizon and experiencing different styles of books etc.

I bloody hate Thomas books and refuse to read them!

edam · 21/01/2008 22:10

krang, there's Nancy the fireman's daughter in the original, and the modern stories have female engines.

penyjo · 21/01/2008 22:38

I get really bored with reading the same books over and over and we also have loads, but my ds is nearly 7 so i've done a lot of reading to him and his ds who is 3 over the years.
Am very big on reading and we are lucky enough to have a good library next to the school so at least once a fortnight we go in and stock up. They get new stories, nice story books for them and early readers for ds. I get a really nice change from reading the same old stuff as they always want to read their "new stories", they even check the date stamps to see how many times it has been issued and always love it when they're the first.

Kids books are great and its nice to enjoy together, but you do need a change otherwise you will just keep rereading the same stories and it becomes a chore. Makes it nice to go back to old favorites, like with dd i liked being able to do the hungry caterpillar, gruffalo, wild things, dear zoo etc, also have a 6 month old and have had to dig out the old picture books

maximummummy · 21/01/2008 22:41

no YANBU i bloody hate thomas books they are soooooooooooo boring

tigerlily1980 · 22/01/2008 20:38

YANBU!!

I can't stand the Thomas stories, and my son went through a phase of loving them. Coming from an all female household, I had never read them before, so thought it was perhaps just me who couldn't stand another minute of huffing, puffing, shunting and buffers.

Hide them. I did.

doodledandy · 22/01/2008 21:09

I do my best to read the books that ds wants (he's 2.9), and obviously that is usually Thomas related! If I really can't face it I just tell him I can't and to get something else, or else read it himself (or look at the pics!). However, I must admit that I slipped a Thomas magazine that I particularly hated (these plumb new depths of wafer thin and ridiculous plotlines)into the re-cycling and then forgot and let ds help me post the papers into the re-cycling bank. Oh god, his face when he saw the Thomas magazine. I had to pretend I didn't know how it had got there.... Needless to say it came back home with us again ARGHHHH

BibiThree · 25/01/2008 11:31

DD is 3.3 as well and also obsessed with Thomas and all things Tank Engine related.

Snap house looking like the Island of Sodor. Hmm.

Snap dh buying her two books every time he goes out of the house!

Snap me being the one to read them every single bloody night.

DD wanted to sleep with her Thomas carry case full of engines on christmas night.

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