ESL Reading List: Transportation

A bus driver named Joe heads out on his route, stopping at one bus stop after another to pick up passengers. He picks up five dogs and five cats in all, dropping nine of them off at the plane, train, or boat. The tenth passenger, a dog, Joe takes home.

Features a range of vrooming, chugging, and whispering vehicles driven by characters ranging from a beach-going family and hat-wearing royals to a noisy troupe of schoolchildren and a fretful ice-cream vendor.

Two little trains, one streamlined, the other old-fashioned, puff, puff, puff, and chug, chug, chug, on their way West.

Illustrations and easy-to-read text follow an airplane as it says good-bye to the ground and hello to the sky, where it flies over a town, mountains, clouds, and people.

Lisa travels on an airplane by herself to visit her uncle in New York.

Illustrations and rhyming text celebrate different kinds of cars and what they can do.

Otto likes cars so much that he is interested in nothing else, until he wakes up one morning to find that he has become a car, unable to speak, eat, or play with his friends.

Rhyming text and illustrations describe different kinds of cars, including fast cars, police cars, taxis, and convertibles.

A wordless picture book in which a boy comes up with an inventive solution for getting his toy airplane down from the roof.

Rhymed text and illustrations show all the things that cars do when they play.

Song lyrics about the bygone era of the mighty iron horse are paired with detailed paintings that pay tribute to life around a little railroad station.

When a bus driver takes a break from his route, a very unlikely volunteer springs up to take his place-- a pigeon. But you never met one like this before.

Presents the traditional nursery rhyme, a line at a time then as a whole, followed by a new rhyme.

Introduces the history of trains, from the nineteenth-century steam locomotives that bridged the American East and West to the Japanese "pusher" commuter trains and the Scottish train used as the Hogwarts Express in the "Harry Potter" films.

Learn facts about the school buses that American children ride.

Text in English and Spanish.

The train rolls along slowly at first, slowly enough to count the cars, to name their colors, and identify their functions, until it starts to pick up speed.

Photographs and simple text identify the many things children might see or do while taking their first trip on an airplane.

Discover a tiny school bus that is pulled by a bicycle, a group children who paddle to school in canoes, and reindeer herders who ride over the icy land on snowmobiles.

What is transportation? -- Using our legs -- On the road -- Tracks and waves.

Explores the history of the airplane.

From race cars to electric cars, from engines to tires, this reader covers cars from multiple perspectives.