Weitzman, author of Locomotive: Building an Eight-Wheeler (1999) and other celebrations of the glories of big, intricate machines, offers a new set of explicitly detailed, finely drawn portraits, cutaways, and schematics—all featuring an 1831 steam engine imported by business visionaries to carry passengers and freight along one leg of the journey between Philadelphia and New York City. Writing in present tense, he follows each major part of the device, from foundry to mill to final assembly—it arrived in America in pieces, with no instructions—and on to later enhancements, such as the cowcatcher and a cabin for the crew. As one of the first locomotives in this country, the John Bull became a model for later designs, and so well was it built, that only minor repairs were necessary before its curators at the Smithsonian Institution fired it up on the 150th anniversary of its arrival here. Budding machiniacs, as well as young students of the Industrial Revolution or railroading’s earliest days will echo the author’s delight at this astonishing tale of enterprise and ingenious engineering. (Nonfiction. 8-12)
Pub Date: March 9, 2004
ISBN: 0-374-38037-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age...
Beverly Cleary has written all kinds of books (the most successful ones about the irrepressible Henry Huggins) but this is her first fantasy.
Actually it's plain clothes fantasy grounded in the everyday—except for the original conceit of a mouse who can talk and ride a motorcycle. A toy motorcycle, which belongs to Keith, a youngster, who comes to the hotel where Ralph lives with his family; Ralph and Keith become friends, Keith gives him a peanut butter sandwich, but finally Ralph loses the motorcycle—it goes out with the dirty linen. Both feel dreadfully; it was their favorite toy; but after Keith gets sick, and Ralph manages to find an aspirin for him in a nearby room, and the motorcycle is returned, it is left with Ralph....
The whimsy is slight—the story is not—and both its interest and its vocabulary are for the youngest members of this age group. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1965
ISBN: 0380709244
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1965
BOOK TO SCREEN
All aboooooard!
Mbalia takes the legacy of Pullman porters as inspiration for his latest fantasy world rooted in Black lore and traditions in this series opener.
Twelve-year-old Jax Freeman is an unwilling transplant to Chicago, sent away from his Raleigh, North Carolina, home by his parents after an incident lands him in the juvenile justice system. Just about as soon as he descends from the train, the weirdness starts: Inanimate objects speak to him, a strange old woman tells him his ancestors need him, and a terrifying creature tries to steal his skin. The strangeness keeps building, from the inspirational signs at his grandmother’s house that keep changing their messages to the class in…magic?…at DuSable Middle School. And what’s with the peculiar reactions he gets whenever people learn his surname? Pretty soon Jax is riding a magic train called the Shriek, charged with a mission to heal a feud among the five magical summoning families of Chicago—a mission that killed his great-great-grandfather. Jax spends most of the novel in a state of frustration as he tries to understand this new world, and readers may sympathize as they wait with him for other characters to dole out information. Mbalia has so much fun developing the world’s rules and inhabitants, though, that readers will probably not mind the adventure’s bagginess. Jax has a digressive narrative style that runs to broad comedy, but it’s his fundamental decency that really shines.
All aboooooard! (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781368064736
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Freedom Fire/Disney
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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