A new Thomas & Friends Step into Reading adventure! It's all about mysterious adventures and extraordinary new engines in this Thomas & Friends Step 2 Step into Reading leveled reader. Train-loving girls and boys who are ready to read will take a wondrous journey with Thomas and his friends in a story about the power of imagination, based on a TV episode collected in the latest DVD. In the early 1940s, a loving father crafted a small blue wooden train engine for his son, Christopher. The stories that this father, the Reverend W Awdry, made up to accompany the wonderful toy were first published in 1945 and became the basis for the Railway Series, a collection of books about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends--and the rest is history. Thomas & Friends now make up a big extended family of engines and others on the Island of Sodor. They appear not only in books but also in television shows and movies and as a wide variety of beautifully made toys. The adventures of Thomas and his friends, which are always, ultimately, about friendship, have delighted generations of train-loving boys and girls for more than 70 years and will continue to do so for generations to come.