Plot Summary - Set in the summer of 1869, families are traveling on the new transcontinental railroad. The book is descriptive with sounds, sights and smells. One feels as though they're traveling across the country by way of train.
Personal Reaction - My son and I love this book. He gets excited about trains and this book feeds his imagination. I enjoyed the illustrations.
Memorable Literary Element - The story is told in free verse poetry. The book uses many descriptive words to get the sounds of the train across to the reader. In the back of the book the reader will find the history of the train and how it began.
Illustrations - The book contains many beautiful illustrations. The illustrations are rendered in watercolor, ink, acrylic, and gouache. The railroad timetables on the endpapers are drawn from a May 1869 newspaper advertisement, reproduced in Riding the Transcontinental: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad.
Review - From Booklist *Starred Review* Floca follows up the acclaimed Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (2009) with this ebullient, breathtaking look at a family’s 1869 journey from Omaha to Sacramento via the newly completed Transcontinental Railroad. The unnamed family is a launching point for Floca’s irrepressible exploration into, well, everything about early rail travel, from crew responsibilities and machinery specifics to the sensory thrills of a bridge rumbling beneath and the wind blasting into your face. The substantial text is delivered in nonrhyming stanzas as enlightening as they are poetic: the “smoke and cinders, / ash and sweat” of the coal engine and the Great Plains stretching out “empty as an ocean.” Blasting through these artful compositions are the bellows of the conductor (“FULL STEAM AHEAD”) and the scream of the train whistle, so loud that it bleeds off the page: “WHOOOOOOO!” Font styles swap restlessly to best embody each noise (see the blunt, bold “SPIT” versus the ornate, ballooning “HUFF HUFF HUFF”). Just as heart pounding are Floca’s bold, detailed watercolors, which swap massive close-ups of barreling locomotives with sweeping bird’s-eye views that show how even these metal giants were dwarfed by nature. It’s impossible to turn a page without learning something, but it’s these multiple wow moments that will knock readers from their chairs. Fantastic opening and closing notes make this the book for young train enthusiasts. Grades K-3. --Daniel Kraus
***Promotion - Create an alphabet book of railroad vocabulary. Examine a variety of alphabet books to see how this is done, allow patrons to view them as well. For example, David M, Schwartz's book Q is for Quark, A Science Alphabet Book provides a science word for every letter of the alphabet and then explains and illustrates each word. The link below is to the Locomotive Literary Guide.
Literary Guide for Locomotive by Brian Floca
Personal Reaction - My son and I love this book. He gets excited about trains and this book feeds his imagination. I enjoyed the illustrations.
Memorable Literary Element - The story is told in free verse poetry. The book uses many descriptive words to get the sounds of the train across to the reader. In the back of the book the reader will find the history of the train and how it began.
Illustrations - The book contains many beautiful illustrations. The illustrations are rendered in watercolor, ink, acrylic, and gouache. The railroad timetables on the endpapers are drawn from a May 1869 newspaper advertisement, reproduced in Riding the Transcontinental: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad.
Review - From Booklist *Starred Review* Floca follows up the acclaimed Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (2009) with this ebullient, breathtaking look at a family’s 1869 journey from Omaha to Sacramento via the newly completed Transcontinental Railroad. The unnamed family is a launching point for Floca’s irrepressible exploration into, well, everything about early rail travel, from crew responsibilities and machinery specifics to the sensory thrills of a bridge rumbling beneath and the wind blasting into your face. The substantial text is delivered in nonrhyming stanzas as enlightening as they are poetic: the “smoke and cinders, / ash and sweat” of the coal engine and the Great Plains stretching out “empty as an ocean.” Blasting through these artful compositions are the bellows of the conductor (“FULL STEAM AHEAD”) and the scream of the train whistle, so loud that it bleeds off the page: “WHOOOOOOO!” Font styles swap restlessly to best embody each noise (see the blunt, bold “SPIT” versus the ornate, ballooning “HUFF HUFF HUFF”). Just as heart pounding are Floca’s bold, detailed watercolors, which swap massive close-ups of barreling locomotives with sweeping bird’s-eye views that show how even these metal giants were dwarfed by nature. It’s impossible to turn a page without learning something, but it’s these multiple wow moments that will knock readers from their chairs. Fantastic opening and closing notes make this the book for young train enthusiasts. Grades K-3. --Daniel Kraus
***Promotion - Create an alphabet book of railroad vocabulary. Examine a variety of alphabet books to see how this is done, allow patrons to view them as well. For example, David M, Schwartz's book Q is for Quark, A Science Alphabet Book provides a science word for every letter of the alphabet and then explains and illustrates each word. The link below is to the Locomotive Literary Guide.
Literary Guide for Locomotive by Brian Floca