Yvonne Ng: Hi, I'm Yvonne Ng and I'm the author of The Mighty Steam Engine. I wrote this book because my son really loved Thomas the Tank Engine. And he had a video that showed how the steam engine and the diesel engines work. And I thought that the picture was great and I thought it would be great to write a book, especially one that showed how the engine worked through rhyme and through pictures. The research I did with the video on Thomas the Tank Engine was useful, but it really just supported what I always knew about steam engines, because I'm a mechanical and aerospace engineer and I had learned about steam power and machines using steam when I was in college. So it was just a fun way to put what I learned in school, to make it understandable to kids and parents.

My favorite part of creating the book was actually working with the editor and the illustrator because I was able to see what was confusing to them and help clarify both the words -- sometimes we had to change the rhyme and the rhythm, sometimes I had to draw pictures or find videos and point out things through email, because we never met each other, to help teach both the editor and the illustrator what I was trying to explain. So that collaboration and that cooperation was great.

I hope that after reading this book, first, if people don't already find trains fascinating, that they do. And they see how fun they are and I hope that they see that it's a big part of our lives. Maybe not the steam engine part, but certainly the trains and transportation. The illustrator did a great job of showing the train within a life of countryside and people, how they interact with it and how they see it. I also hope that people feel comfortable looking at technical diagrams and not being scared of them. And maybe being able to think about that, in a way, because when I used to teach students engineering, I realized that if you've never seen drawings that are trying to explain technical things to you, you don't know how to read them. So if you start early, you can start learning. It's another kind of literacy.