Thomas and Friends is considered one of the few animated series that entertain as well as educate its audience. In Thomas and Scruff,you get to meet two of the animated series characters and find out why and how they became friends.

Written by Reverend W Awdry, the story of this hardbound book revolves around Thomas and a new train Scruff, who are trains that work at the Docks. They are not much different from us humans because they can also talk and understand each other, but share our fears as well. This is the story about how the two met at the Docks for the first time, and how they became good friends.

In this book, Thomas wants the newbie Scruff to get cleaned up before his next job, without realising that Scruff doesn’t like to be washed up.

On hearing about Thomas’s intention, he runs away from everyone because he has never seen soap, or brushes before. Instead of forcing him into doing something he wasn’t comfortable with, Thomas used his brains and not only found Scruff but also let him escape operation cleanup because the alternate made more sense.

What was the alternative? How did Thomas get Scruff to come out? You can find out the answers in this book where every page is illustrated, and every word you might not know is highlighted in bold, so you can check the dictionary for that, or ask someone older than you in the house.

There are several lessons one can learn from this story; the first being that forcing someone to do something they aren’t comfortable with is not the only answer, there is always an alternative. Secondly, planning the future always comes in handy as it did in the case of Thomas and Scruff, because had Thomas not known about Scruff’s future assignment, he wouldn’t have made the correct decision that came in handy.

Thomas and Friendsis not just a book or an animated series that you should read or watch. It is something that imparts useful life lessons to young minds so that when they grow up, they know what would be the right thing to do, rather than asking for advice that might or might not steer them toward the right solution.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 2nd, 2024