Real Wheels: Travel Adventures
"Pilot Dave" Hood, cocreator and host of theThere Goes a...series of children's videos, straps himself into a variety of flying machines inThere Goes a Plane. Riding shotgun on a stunt plane that loops and whooshes to a dizzying degree, Hood does a lot of yelping, but he also succinctly and entertainingly describes exactly why airplanes defy gravity. (Adults can learn, too.) We learn the workings of passenger jets, and how the airline industry functions in various other ways, from selling passenger tickets to getting one's luggage to its proper destination. The plentiful comic moments include the sight of Hood falling onto a suitcase conveyor belt.InThere Goes a Train, engineer Dave shows us around old and new trains, takes control of a freight train going top speed, and introduces us to steam engines, locomotives, and an old caboose. Plenty to see, lots of location shooting, big action for tykes interested in moving machines. Dave's banter might go over the heads of some of the target audience, but you can ignore that.There Goes a Busis an information-jammed journey into the secret lives of the thundering buses that thrill us when we're little. The beloved yellow and black ones are only the beginning: besides city buses, cross-country Greyhound types, and touristy double-deckers, we also get a lift on an articulated number (the kind that bends) and--the traffic stopper--a bus that, when driven into water, becomes a boat. Stops for maintenance and under-the-hood investigations keep the wheels going round and round, and rap sessions with a bus-driving honcho buckle us in for the long haul.