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Percy the Small Engine is a fictional anthropomorphic steam engine from ''The Railway Series'' of children's books written by the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry and his son, Christopher Awdry. Percy also appears in the spin-off television series ''Thomas & Friends''. Percy lives on the Island of Sodor with many other locomotives, including Thomas the Tank Engine, Gordon the Big Engine and Henry the Green Engine. He is the smallest, youngest and probably cheekiest, of the principal steam engine characters. He carries the number 6 on his bunker. The Fat Controller brought him to Sodor when there was an engine strike due to a shortage of shunting engines. The bigger engines initially tried to bully him, but Percy soon showed that he was more than capable of standing up for himself. After a few years of shunting at the Big Station, the Fat Controller promoted him to goods traffic on Thomas' branch line. When not pulling trucks, he can be seen pulling the post train or even taking Annie and Clarabel when Thomas is busy. Percy's best friends are Thomas and Toby. He is also known to have a great respect for Edward ever since his first appearance. He is reasonably experienced, but can still occasionally be a little naive and overconfident. In that sense, he is the perfect foil for Thomas – who can be just as headstrong. Percy's first appearance in ''The Railway Series'' was in book no. 5, ''Troublesome Engines'', originally published in 1950. He was given his own title with book no. 11, ''Percy the Small Engine''. ==Illustration controversy== Like Henry the Green Engine, Percy was the source of much friction between Rev. W. Awdry and C. Reginald Dalby, the first illustrator of The Railway Series. Awdry complained that Percy did not look like a real locomotive, an issue that had caused contention between the two men on several occasions and concerning several characters. In the case of Percy, it was particularly infuriating, as Awdry had built a model of the engine in order that the artist could use it as a reference. All this came to a head when the book ''Percy the Small Engine'', centering on the eponymous character, was written. Awdry wrote to Dalby a letter requesting that he should make Percy look less like "a green caterpillar with red stripes". The sentence was this: "I beg, pray, and exhort you not to make Percy look like a green caterpillar with red stripes!" Insulted by this, Dalby resigned from the Railway Series. Subsequent illustrators modified the design to make Percy look more like a typical industrial locomotive. The television series, however, utilised the original design. The phrase "a green caterpillar with red stripes" resurfaces in the later story 'Woolly Bear', in which Thomas uses it as an insult to Percy and amends were made between Awdry and Dalby. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Percy the Small Engine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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