"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:
I previously enjoyed The Impossible Boy by Ben Brooks:
No comments:
Post a Comment