The train at the end of my street by Tom Jellett

I still find it quite exciting catching a train (whether to sit upstairs? Or downstairs?) and hopefully some of that excitement is conveyed in the drawings. ... 

(I usually sit upstairs). Tom Jellett

I once had a train at the end of my street so the title of this book really grabbed my attention. I now live in a part of Sydney where there are no trains. Commuters and families have to travel by bus to the CBD to then catch a train. I actually do this every week on my way to a volunteer job. I really enjoy the train part of my journey. It would be fantastic to share this book with your own child before or after a train outing especially if this is not a part of their daily life. The trains in this book are clearly in Sydney but this book will translate easily to other train networks. You might even have a chat about graffiti and also all the supportive inclusions around train stations for people with a visual impairment. 

This new Australian picture book is a joyous celebration of family life and trains. Mum and dad and their two children live near a station. Mum catches the train to work and on weekends the family catch the train or an outing. Our narrator explains all about the different trains, how to buy tickets, and how to stand safely on the platform but this is not a lesson it's just a recount of their happy time together. Most of the story takes place over one day and this is beautifully shown in the front end paper (morning) and back end paper (same scene in the evening).

I am certain this book will be a 2026 CBCA Early Childhood notable. Tom Jellett creates so much movement and (implied) noise on each page. This book is an essential purchase for every preschool and also perfect to add to your school library.  I especially love the double spread scene of the busy station where we see all sorts of people on the move heading to and from their trains in groups or pairs or alone with bags and suitcases, backpacks and strollers. Read more about Tom Jellett here. (Hot stuff by Margaret Clark is one of my all-time favourite read aloud books). 

It’s a simple book that feels very familiar and explores all things train from the perspective of a child who can hear trains from their home. From meeting Mum as she disembarks after work to buying a ticket, checking the platform clock and bringing snacks for a long journey, this book has it all covered! There are many different types of trains and stations, and all are lovingly illustrated with Sydney-based author and illustrator Tom Jellett’s trademark warmth. Jellett has created a delightful celebration of transportation and a perfect book to share with train fan. Readings

Image source: Good Reading Magazine

Dirt by Sea

The Station Cat by Stephen Hogtun

 

The Station Cat: A story of kindness and hope

"This train is not for you, and you have no ticket, you will have to save to come aboard."

A small skinny cat arrives at the old train station. People waiting for trains do not notice her.

"The colour drained from this place a long time ago."

You will have to save lives and save she does. This young half-starved cat connects with various people at the train station as each face a life crisis. 

"Crowds of people went about their sorrow without noticing her at all."

"If they had only looked closer they would have seen ... Eyes of radiant, jade green staring back."

There are wonderful words used in this book. Here are the colours: ginger, cinnamon, lilac, fawn, amber, carmine and violet. Other rich words: sombre, vapour, spectrum of colours, wistful, and vivid.

Share sentences like this with your older students:

"She paced softly upon graceful, pink paw pads ... "

"Waxed wooden herringbone floors reflecting the light blue sky which chorused the light footsteps that now skipped along it."

Publisher blurb: A lonely little kitten wanders into a dull, gray station, full of dull, gray people. Her colorful fur and bright green eyes bring warmth and life to this weary place, and soon people begin to notice the kitten. As she learns about the different travelers and their struggles from loss and loneliness, the little kitten wants to help fill their world with hope and color, too.

Adult readers will probably see deeper themes in this book (you can see these in the labels I assigned this post) as we watch each person engulfed by the despair of their life circumstances but I think readers aged 8+ will simply appreciate that a small act of kindness can mean so much to each of us.

The narrative itself is grave, detailed and evocative, matching the mood created by the colours and is set out as unrhyming verse so that the line breaks emphasise particular words and images. The movements and expressions of the cat are beautifully observed and the depiction of different passengers invites readers to imagine the stories of their lives and what has brought them to the colourless state at the start of the book. Just Imagine

This is a sophisticated presentation of an important message of the value of community and reaching out to others. ... The story stays with you long after you close the pages. More About Books

Every now and then when I go into the city, I decide I just HAVE to buy myself a treat - which for me is a Picture Book. It can take me a long time to decide what to buy because I am fussy, I want to spend my money wisely and I have three main criteria:

• The book has to touch my soul.
• The illustrations have to be exceptional
• If possible the book should be fairly new (this is not essential)

The Station Cat meet two of my three criteria. And I should add I prefer to buy picture books that cost less than AUS$30 although this criteria now needs revising because so many absolutely beautiful and truly special picture books are now closer to AUS45. The Station Cat was published by DK in London and it only cost AU$19.98.

Stephen Hogtun is an author/illustrator who lives on the west coast of sunny Norway in an old house overlooking a lovely fjord. His picture books cover serious topics in a very gentle, child-friendly way and feature visually stunning illustrations.

Here are some other books by Stephen Hogtun - I am curious about his work and how it came to be published in the UK and in English.

Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon

"Two little trains went down the track, two little trains went west. Puff, puff, puff and chug, chug chug, two little trains to the West."

On the cover you can see the real train - the silver train - at the station. On the station there are two cases and a present. The present is a toy train and as you turn inside the present is unwrapped and then the dual story begins. On the left side we watch the journey of the huge silver train across a variety of landscapes meanwhile on the right or facing page the little toy train navigates landscapes inside the house. This idea is just genius and so different from the interpretations of the text by the two previous illustrators. My edition from 2001 takes this simple text to a whole new and completely wonderful level.

Look down, look down that long steel track

That long steel track to the west.

Take your time when you read this with your young reading companion because each pairing of outside and inside is such a visual treat. See inside here.

Two Little trains was first published in 1949 with illustrations by Jean Charlot. In 2000 the publisher released a new edition with illustrations by Greg Pizzoli. All editions are now out of print but you might be lucky and find one in a library - hopefully the one illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Image from the Jean Charlot foundation

The Dillons illustrate both the charming domestic interiors and the sweep of landscape with elegant geometric forms, colors of great depth and richness, and their magical touch ... The relationship between the two trains is also illuminated on the cover, where, next to the silver train sits a set of luggage with a beribboned gift whose box is stamped with the image of the toy train. Kirkus Star review

I am little bit obsessed with Margaret Wise Brown (1920-1952) although oddly not because of her really famous book Goodnight Moon. Luckily my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything has plenty of books by Margaret Wise Brown in her school library but of course this is only a tiny portion of her amazing output which was over 100 books. 

The Golden Swift by Lev Grossman

In the first train adventure Kate and her young brother Tom meet all sorts of endangered animals and along the way they learn about the main threats - habitat loss, human behaviour, hunting, global warming and more. In this second instalment Kate once again boards the Silver Arrow but this time she makes discoveries about the ways people are trying to reintroduce species to their old homelands - places where they have not been seen for decades or even centuries. 

Publisher blurb: It's been a year since Kate and Tom became conductors on the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway, and life has changed completely! Delivering animal passengers to their rightful habitats using their very own secret steam train, The Silver Arrow, is exciting and magical and fulfilling. Until one day a new and mysterious train almost rams them off the track! Its name? The Golden Swift. Kate catches a glimpse of the conductors. They're children, like them, and they're dropping animals off at all the wrong stations! Kate is determined to catch up with their rivals and confront them. Her actions will lead to an adventure bigger than she could have dreamed of, racing through the highlands of Western Scotland, trekking in the Australian outback and diving down deep into the Bering Sea on a magical submarine. Kate will have to discover a whole new way to offer endangered animals safe and lasting homes … Read a story extract here. 

The blurb makes all of this sound very straightforward but interfering with nature is not an easy solution. On the surface this seems like a good idea to reintroduce species for example beavers to England, but in reality every action has a reaction. Lynx are taken back to Scotland but when the lynx kill some sheep the farmers begin to shoot them. Some of the relocations are successful but in the end Kate and her new friend Jag decide to retrieve all of the animals they previously moved to a new location.

Read more plot details in this review from Reading Time.

The snarky banter of the talking locomotive is an understated delight ... Kirkus 

Here is the alternate cover:

I do wish this book had back notes. I really wanted to know more about so many of the animals that were mentioned: cassowary, wolverine, kodkod, matamata, Przewalski's horse,Darwin's rhea, red-tailed phascogale, western Javan ebony langur, and the American burying beetle.

The Golden Swift is the second book in this series by Lev Grossman. I did enjoy the first book - The Silver Arrow. This second book was an interesting story but it didn't hold my attention in the same way as the first. The reason for the journey to find and rescue Uncle Herbert felt a little contrived and I was unconvinced when he explained why he had been missing. But mostly I just wanted to know more about each of the relocated animals and more about the real world success or failures of these schemes.

In a strange coincidence this is the second train journey I have read over the last couple of week.

The Dragon on the Train

The Dragon on the Train by Ben Brooks illustrated by George Ermos

"They'd taken his Spark. They'd closed in on him and stolen the music from inside his head. After that, the colour had gone from the world. What did that mean? Would he never truly hear music again? Would the rest of his life be spent hearing only the tick of the clock and the echo of his footsteps?"

Elliot's precious and loved grandmother Ellen has died. Elliot is deeply grieving. He is angry. He is lost. He is sure the world will never be the same. Elliott spent huge amounts of time with his grandmother because his mum was always working to make enough money for rent and food. Grandma Ellen was a cellist and over the first ten years of his life Elliott had been exposed to music of every genre. 

"She liked the lilting folk of The Dubliners, the doom laden guitars of Slipknot, the bubbling synths of Kraftwerk. She liked music written hundreds of years ago and she liked music written yesterday. She liked music that, to Elliott, barely even sounded like music."

But now Elliott cannot bear to hear any music. He decided to banish all music from his life. He stops playing his violin and fills his brain with distracting nonsense words whenever he hears music. Sixteen days after Grandma Ellen died, though, Elliott finds a mystery ticket under his pillow. This is a train ticket and late that night a small dragon appears in his room. 

"It had a sticky-out belly, dull scales and a tail that flicked back and forth behind its head. A glass lantern that cast long diamonds of yellow light across Elliot's carpet hung from the end of its tail. On its head the dragon wore a battered straw hat that sat a jaunty angle. The hat wobbled precariously above a pair of electric-blue eyes ... "

Kimorin has arrived as a guardian to help Elliot (or Olio) with the series of train journeys that he is about to embark on. Elliot has no idea that he is about to see Beethoven as a young boy, spend time on the Titanic on the night of the sinking (take a look at The Ship of Doom by MA Bennett), meet his ancestors and even travel to his own future. Along the way Elliott and Kimorin are pursued by monstrous creatures called Hush-Hush. The Hush-Hush hunt for and take the Spark from humans.

" ... that special thing inside you that lets you feel when you hear music. It's the thing that turns a song from a few random old sounds into an emotion."

This book was such a surprise. The story feels familiar, the story of a child processing their grief over the loss of a loved one, but there is so much gentle humour, a wonderful cheeky dragon who you will love and one very moving chapter that made me cry. I also learnt about an historical event - The Singing Revolution.

At 7:00 PM on 23 August 1989, approximately two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands, forming a human chain from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius, spanning 675 kilometres, or 420 miles. It was a peaceful protest against the illegal Soviet occupation and also one of the earliest and longest unbroken human chains in history. Estonian World

Huge thanks to Beachside Bookshop for the advance copy of The Dragon on the Train which will be published in June 2023. Readers who loved The Polar Express are sure to enjoy this deeper story about train journeys and our need to process grief. 

"His eyes filled with hot tears. For the first time since he'd been given the news about his grandma, he let himself explode. He let himself cry, loud and ugly. He let himself scream, face buried in his pillow. And he let his body thrash madly on his mattress like a fish out of water."

Companion books:

The Train to Impossible Places

The Boundless

The Silver Arrow

On the Blue Comet

The Dark Blue 100 Ride bus Ticket (this may be difficult to find but it is fabulous)

Eight Keys

I previously enjoyed The Impossible Boy by Ben Brooks:

The Impossible Boy

The Shop Train by Josie Wowolla Boyle illustrated by Paul Seden

"The railway track stretches across the plains as far as the eye can see. 

Rosie and her mother are waiting in the crowd to catch their first glimpse of the train."

Blurb Magabala Books: The Shop Train was inspired by the Tea and Sugar train that began operating in 1917 to provide supplies and services for rail workers and people living in remote communities between Port Augusta in South Australia and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. The Shop Train is a heartwarming story about Rosie and her mum, and the rickety journey in their old car to pick up stores from the shop train. The train carried everything they needed, and was an exciting time for all who lived near its tracks. Rosie and her mum slowly wind their way through Wonghi country, on its dusty tracks and never-ending horizon, until they reach the train, brimming with activity and treasures from other places. Paul Seden’s evocative illustrations effortlessly capture a bygone era, rendering the past with a deep sense of nostalgia, whilst capturing its uncluttered beauty. The Shop Train was inspired by similar journeys author Josie Wowolla Boyle took as a young girl. It was these journeys that left unforgettable memories on Josie, no matter how young or old she may have been.

Here are a set of teachers notes for this book. I love the ending of The Shop Train where Rosie and her mum arrive home with their "fluffy flour, grainy rice, fine sugar, powdered milk, arrowroot biscuits and black tea leaves". Unfortunately, as they have travelled over the bumpy road, the paper bags have "split open and everything is mixed together".  

Luckily mum has a yandy or yandi dish. Mum is able to use this to sort out all the mixed up foods.

It would be good to read this book alongside Tea and Sugar Christmas and to compare the illustrations by Robert Ingpen with the work of Paul Seden. 

Illustration by Paul Seden

The pencil illustrations by Paul Seden, from the Wuthathi and Muralag people of North Queensland, give the reader a real sense of the vastness of the landscape. With the low scrub, flat plains, and Australian animals dotted around, it is difficult to imagine anyone living there. Glam Adelaide

Similar scene by Robert Ingpen

Subway Sparrow by Leyla Torres

This is an obscure old (1997) book but the art is so brilliant I just needed to share it here. I am amazed to discover it might still be available.

"Moja apaszka'. 'Yeah, cover him with the scarf!' 'Si Cubramoslo'. 'Hurry, I'll pick him up."

A young girl is sitting in the subway train when a small sparrow flies in the door. In the carriage there is a man who speaks Spanish and a lady who speaks Polish. Somehow the girl, who only speaks English, needs to ask these people to help her catch the bird, gently, and then carry it off the train and set it free.

There is no translation of the dialogue in Spanish and Polish but somehow it is easy to understand that everyone has a common goal of helping this small, helpless bird, to escape from the train, to find freedom and blue skies.

Torres's first picture book ...  is a charming multicultural vignette. Kirkus

I am not going to say this is an essential purchase for a library or home collection but if you do stumble upon this book, as I did, I am certain you will enjoy the gentle story which captures a tiny moment in time and the small but important actions of a group of people on a train. The tiny moment in time idea reminds me of the special books by Bob Graham such as Silver Buttons; How the Sun got to Coco's House; Vanilla Icecream; and Home in the Rain. Here is a video of the whole book. Take a look so you can see the fabulous illustration of shoes worn by a boy on the train. 

I have read a few other books about subways recently:

I am the Subway

The man with the Violin

Milo Imagines the World

IBBY Honour list 2018

Here are some other books by Leyla Torres:

I am the Subway by Kim Hyo-eun translated by Deborah Smith

"I rattle and clatter over the tracks. Same time, same route, every day."

"The Seoul subway network is one of the longest in the world and reaches far beyond the city limits. ... It carries an average of 7.2 million people per day ... "

It is so wonderful to open this book and see the way Kim Hyo-eun breaks one of the "picture book rules" by starting his book with six pages (three double-spreads) of the story before we reach the title page. And the words on the title page are actually part of the narrative. You can see art from this book at Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast. 

Over time the subway (our narrator) can now recognise and name 'his' passengers and from the way they walk or run, the things they carry or their demeanour 'he' can also gauge their mood and even their back story. Mr Wanju is running late but once he sits on the train he can calm down and relax. In the alternating page we know Mr Wanju is late because he was spending time with his daughter. 

At the next station we meet Granny. She is bringing fresh seafood to her family in Seoul. Then we meet Mr Jae-sung the shoe repair man; young Na-yoon heading to her after school class; and Mr Gu the glove salesman. 

Even though this story is set in Korea - it has a truly universal appeal. It would be fun to read this after taking your child for a ride on the subway or other train network in your city. 

This book is just perfect in so many ways. The water colour art is created with enormous skill; each character on the train has a distinct personality, and of course this book comes from a unique point of view - the subway itself. Take a minute to view this very special video based on the art in this book.  I also need to mention the scrumptious end papers beginning in the very early morning and ending as the sunsets. I am the Subway is one of those truly special books you can share with a young child and also with older students as a way to explore art techniques and book design. I can imagine a deep discussion over one of the pages near the end of the book where we see three pairs of shoes. This image is repeated on the back cover:

"a gentle afternoon light that washes over everything - old shoes, new shoes, clean and dull shoes."

With echoes of Korean cinema style, this book captures the ordinary of each day. The exquisite illustrations are created in watercolour. This is a book not to be missed. Kids' Book Review

A contemplative, poignant rendering of everyday journeys. Kirkus Star review

Kim’s author’s note mentions how her father taught his children to see many things; those details – “things not visible to the eye but still significant” – are exactly the elements that stupendously enhance each page: different gaits of people in motion, phones galore, bags and packages, and various expressions. Lucky readers, climb aboard: extraordinary explorations await. Smithsonian

Thanks to the subway train’s musings, readers gain poignant glimpses into the joys, sorrows and hopes of these passengers. The train’s voice is tender and compassionate, and the sound of its movement, “ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum,” is a refrain that anchors the book.  BookPage

If you want to look at another book where we see inside a daily transport system try to find this wonderful wordless book:

Illustrator: Julie Volk Title: Good morning, little Tram! Guten Morgen, Kleine Strassenbahn!

AND if you want to explore point of view I highly recommend:

A page in the wind