Little Man is a huge fan of creaky Cranky, the big grey static crane who works in the docks on the island of Sodor with Thomas and his friends, so when I saw the paperback version of this No Sleep for Cranky in Poundland I thought it would be a great addition to his rapidly growing book collection.

As the title suggests, the story is about Cranky the crane. As he works at the dock which receives deliveries day and night he gets very little sleep which makes him cranky. Salty decides that Cranky is cranky due to his lack of company and decides to cheer him up with tales from when he used to work at sea (I have this bit played out in my mind a bit like uncle Albert in Only Fools and Horses!), but this just makes Cranky even more irritable and he ends up causing an accident leaving him trapped overnight with Salty. Will Cranky decide that life is not so bad after all, or will he push Salty into the sea before going on a murderous rampage - I won't spoil the ending for you ...

Little Man really enjoyed this book - Although it is based on an episode of the series it wasn't one we had seen before which made it even better. Each double page has a full page picture and a page of text with about 30 words on it so at the moment it is a book I read to him. However there are no really long words and the text is a good size so there is no reason why he wouldn't be able to read this himself in a year or so. The pictures are bright and colourful and Little Man likes to pick details out of them. He particularly likes the ones of the fat controller getting measured up for a new suit with the tape measure around his belly! We have had this book for a few weeks now, and we tend to read it at least every other day. We would definitely recommend it to any Thomas fans out there.

As this is the paperback version of the book the front cover is slightly different. The book is about 15cm square with a picture of Cranky in the middle, and the title in a blue box below it. For a pound this book is an absolute bargain, and I will be looking out for others in the series when I am next in there. If you can't find it in the shops then you can order it from Amazon for £1.50 delivered. Published by Egmont Books.