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 Ship of Doom by M.A. Bennett

A number of learned adults gather at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1894. This is the place where you will find the Meridian line. "It is from this line that all the time in the world is measured."

These eminent men and women have invented a train-like machine that, when placed on the Meridian Line, can take its passengers forward in time. Their purpose is to bring back inventions and technology from the future. It has been decided that they will send three children because children are easily over looked. A ship (yes it is the Titanic) is about to set sail in 1912 and on board is the famous Guglielmo Marconi and his amazing new invention. The problem is this is THE Titanic and the three children - Luna, Konstantin and Aidan are set to arrive on board just a few days before the fateful sinking. 

These three children cannot drown because they have their time machine but what will happen if they try to alter history and steal the wireless radio transmitter?

The author has done a great deal of research for her book.  Here are a few facts which have been woven into the plot:

Less than an hour before the Titanic hit the fateful iceberg and began to sink, another ship nearby, the Californian, had radioed to say that it had been stopped by a dense ice field. If the Titanic had paid proper attention to this message from the Californian they may have been able to avoid hitting the iceberg. However, the message did not begin with the prefix ‘MSG’, meaning Master’s Service Gram, so the captain was not obliged to directly acknowledge receiving it. Titanic’s radio operator, Jack Phillips, decided that the message was not urgent and therefore did not pass it along to Captain Smith.

On a ship there are designated lookouts, whose job it is to keep watch for danger, such as icebergs. So, why didn’t the lookouts on the Titanic spot the huge iceberg that the ship was travelling towards? Well, the Titanic had 2 lookouts, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, that were located in the crows nest, 29 meters above the deck. These lookouts were missing one crucial tool: their binoculars. On the night that the Titanic sank, the conditions were pretty calm, which actually made the iceberg harder to spot. This is because, if the water had been choppier, the lookouts may have seen the waves breaking at the bottom of the iceberg. Titanic’s second officer, David Blair, had possession of the key to the binoculars’ storage box, but he was transferred off the ship before it set sail for New York. Blair forgot to hand over his keys before being transferred, so the lookouts on the Titanic were left without binoculars.

MA Bennett (Marina Fiorato) is the author of several Young Adult titles such as the five book STAGS series. 

If you do know your history you may have detected an error above. Marconi's device was installed on the Titanic but the man himself actually travelled on a different ship, the Lusitania, three days earlier to New York. Read more here. Marconi built his equipment and transmitted electrical signals through the air from one end of his house to the other, and then from the house to the garden in 1895. These experiments were, in effect, the dawn of practical wireless telegraphy or radio. Linking back to the Titanic - the radio operators were able to use Marconi's invention and Morse code to send an SOS saving the lives of some passengers. Don't worry that MA Bennett has made an historical mistake - she hasn't. This is a book about time travel and the butterfly effect. There will be a way to save Marconi - you need to read this book to discover the clever way the children manage this.

This book is one from a new series which explores the implications of the butterfly effect. The second book will be released in October:

I talked about this idea previously in relation to a picture book - And ... by Philippe Jalbert.

Companion read on the topic of altering history through time travel:

The Titanic sank on 15th April, 1912 so this week it is the 110th anniversary of this catastrophic event. My friend at Kinderbookswitheverything alerted me to the date with her post this week. In a serendipitous link I read The Ship of Doom earlier this week. 

Here are some other middle grade novels (and one longer picture book) based on the sinking of the Titanic:

And here is a book by Australian author Gary Crew illustrated by Bruce Whatley that I would like to find published in 2005.

I would also like to read this book based on Wallace Hartley who used the power of music to comfort thousands of people during a catastrophic situation.