Synopsis
All aboard! This train travels through history making stops in time to learn about the progress of travel by rail.
Hop up into the cab of a speeding modern-day locomotive and look down the tracks into the past. Perhaps these are the same tracks that the diesel-electric locomotives of thirty years ago thundered down, pulling their loads. Perhaps you can see the steam engines of thirty years before that. Watch time unravel and the landscape change as the history of trains barrels through the pages of Steam, Smoke, and Steel: Back in Time with Trains.
The first trains puffed great billowing clouds of smoke and showered passengers with burning embers as they sped down the rails at a pulse-pounding twenty miles an hour! By the 1850's, however, trains were traveling much faster, much farther, and much cleaner and train travel contributed to the growth of our nation. Young readers will be fascinated by the exciting - and sometimes dangerous - story of trains while they learn about the different kinds of engines, equipment, and jobs necessary for operating trains throughout history. The young narrator introduces readers to trains from the time of his great-great-great-great-great grandfather at the turn of the nineteenth century to his father's train of today, showing the great changes that invention and progress have brought over time.
Patrick O'Brien's striking illustrations emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and romance of the train. Detailed and richly textured oil paintings take readers on a trip through time to ride aboard open-air cars, travel through mountain passes, and roar down the rails on high-speed bullet trains. Budding engineers will love getting a glimpse atthe past and dreaming about the future of trains in Steam, Smoke, and Steel: Back in Time with Trains.
Publishers Weekly
For this short history of trains, O'Brien (Gigantic! How Big Were the Dinosaurs?) brings a fictional overlay to a fact-filled presentation. The child narrator comes from a long dynasty of train engineers. Starting with his father (who drives a giant locomotive) and working his way back to his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather ("one of the very first people ever to drive a train in this country"), the narrator describes the generations both of his family and of trains. Both the text and the watercolor-and-gouache illustrations are generous with details, explaining how different types of engines work and identifying specific parts of various trains. Anecdotes dot the narrative. For example, in the 1960s the boy's grandfather hauls a circus train up from Florida; in the 1870s Jesse James and his gang stage a hold-up of the great-great-great-grandfather's train. But the storytelling isn't vivid enough to overcome the limitations of the mannered structure--only railroad aficionados are likely to hop aboard. Ages 4-9. (July) EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING Anne Mazer. Scholastic, $4.50 paper (144p) ISBN 0-439-14977-0 ~ Mazer (The Fixits) introduces a spunky and appealing heroine in this inaugural volume of The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes: she--and her days--are more average than amazing. This is, in fact, the bee in Abby's bonnet. Her three "SuperSibs" outshine her. One of her older twin sisters excels at virtually every sport, the other is the top student in ninth grade, and her younger brother is a math and computer genius. Her lawyer mother also runs marathons, and her father owns a successful computer business. Where does this leave poor Abby? Feeling "small and insignificant," yet determined to prove "that she was deserving of being a Hayes, too." At the start of her fifth-grade year, Abby resolves to make her mark by becoming a soccer star by the end of the fall season. Documented largely through the journal writings of this devoted young writer, Abby's quest to reach this goal, as well as her frustration with her accomplished siblings, makes for repetitious reading at times. But Mazer injects some moments of sophisticated, wry humor (e.g., a Bridget Jones-like journal entry in which the allegedly newly reformed heroine notes, "Went home and ate plate of cookies to celebrate decision to turn self into great athlete"). In the end, Abby's real talents outshine those to which she aspires. Abby may well score enough points with readers that they'll ride out this tale's pleasures and faults, and move on to her next caper, The Declaration of Independence, also due this month. Ages 8-12. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|