As much as children love trains, waiting for a great train book to come along is a lot like waiting at an abandoned junction for a steam engine to come down the tracks. One spends one's time waiting, in vain that is, until a magical book like Crossing appears unexpectedly. Crossing, published by Britain's Candlewick press, is actually set in 1953 at a railroad crossing in Brunswick Maine. The brings to life a 1953 poem by distinguished Maine poet Philip Booth, a Castine resident. Booth's poem forms the entire text for the book. "Stop Look Listen/as gate stripes swing down/count the cars hauling distance/upgrade through town:/warning whistle, bellclang,/engine eating steam/engineer waving/a fast freight dream:/B&M boxcar/boxcar again,/Frisco gondola/eight-nine-ten/Erie and Wabash,/Seabord, U.P.,/Pennsy tankcar,/twenty-two,three,/Phoebe Snow,B&O,/thirty-four,five,/Santa Fe cattle/ shipped alive/red cars yellow cars,/orange cars, black,/Youngstown steel/down to mobile/on Rock Island track,/fifty-nine,sixty,/hoppers of coke,/Anaconda copper,/hotbox smoke,/eighty-eight,/red-ball freight,/Rio Grande,/Nickel Plate,/Hiawatha,/Lackawanna,/rolling fast/ and loose,/ninety-seven,/coal car,/boxcar,/caboose!" Booth's delightful poem is brought to exquisite life by first time Children=s book illustrator Bagram Ibaatoulline. Ibatouulline sets Crossing in the 1950's which formed the backdrop of Booth's original inspiration. Loaded with charm, detail, period detail, and beautifully rendered interplay between bystanders and the passing train, Crossing is a positively delightful book that children will want to hear, read and thumb through, again and again. While on the subject of positively delightful books which have come out in time for the holiday season, one is minded to mention the excellent sequel to Michael Hoeye's Time Stops For No Mouse, The Sands of Time. Hoeye's books, which cannot fail to please 8-13 year olds, feature mystery, adventure, a gentle, understated style, and well rounded characterization. In The Sands of Time Hoeye's likeable protagonist, third generation mouse watchmaker Hermux Tantamoq is back in a story which surpasses its original in terms of both narrative tension and character development. An old friend of Hermux's deceased father appears, bearing an antique scroll which hints at a lost civilization of cats. (Cats are considered by mice to be mythical creatures.) The scroll contains directions to a Royal Library of the Cat Kingdom whose contents seem sure to turn mouse history on its head. The library is buried in the desert wastelands and Hermux , along with Birch Tentintrotter, his father's old friend, are aided by the dashing aviatrix Linka Perfliger. The trio sets out to foil the last scion of a timeworn family of mouse scholars, the Stepfitchlers, who has a vested interest in ancient history. Interesting, exciting, and satisfying, The Sands of Time is just the thing to stave off the appetite of voracious young readers. |
