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Summary
Summary
Trains and time travel spur one boy's thrilling adventure as he seeks to rejoin his father in a new classic from Rosemary Wells and Bagram Ibatoulline.
One day in a house at the end of Lucifer Street, on the Mississippi River side of Cairo, Illinois, eleven-year-old Oscar Ogilvie's life is changed forever. The Crash of 1929 has rippled across the country, and Oscar's dad must sell their home -- with all their cherished model trains -- and head west in search of work. Forced to move in with his humorless aunt, Carmen and his teasing cousin, Willa Sue, Oscar is lonely and miserable -- until he meets a mysterious drifter and witnesses a crime so stunning it catapults Oscar on an incredible train journey from coast to coast, from one decade to another. Filled with suspense and peppered with witty encounters with Hollywood stars and other bigwigs of history, this captivating novel by Rosemary Wells, gorgeously illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline, resonates with warmth, humor, and the true magic of a timeless adventure.
Author Notes
Rosemary Wells was born in New York City on January 29, 1943. She studied at the Museum School in Boston. Without her degree, she left school at the age of 19 to get married. She began her career in publishing, working as an art editor and designer first at Allyn and Bacon and later at Macmillan Publishing.
She is an author and illustrator of over 60 books for children and young adults. Her first book was an illustrated edition of Gilbert and Sullivan's I Have a Song to Sing-O. Her other works include Martha's Birthday, The Fog Comes on Little Pig Feet, Unfortunately Harriet, Mary on Horseback, and Timothy Goes to School. She also created the characters of Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora, and Yoko, which are featured in some of her books. She has won numerous awards including a Children's Book Council Award for Noisy Nora in 1974, the Edgar Allan Poe award for two young adult books, Through the Looking Glass and When No One Was Looking, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Shy Charles.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Model trains, time travel, and cameo appearances by Ronald Reagan and Alfred Hitchcock, among others, make this adventure an ideal family read-aloud. "One day everything in the world was fine. Dad and I had lamb chops and ice cream," says Oscar Ogilvie, 11, about life with his widowed father in 1929 smalltown Illinois. Self-reliant and companionable, Oscar makes dinner so he and his father, a tractor salesman, can spend their evenings constructing elaborate railroad layouts. Then the Great Depression hits, and the Ogilvies lose their house and, worse, their trains, which are put on display in the bank lobby. Oscar's kindness to a laid-off math teacher turns serendipitous when the teacher becomes the bank's night watchman, giving Oscar access to his trains. During one after-hours visit, the bank is robbed; Oscar escapes by diving into the model train set, where he crisscrosses time and the continent, unscrambling what's happened to him. Well-drawn secondary characters and evocative details bring the hardscrabble 1930s to life. Ibatoulline's intricately detailed illustrations, both full-page and double-spread, have a Norman Rockwell quality that reinforces the setting and adds a nostalgic air. Ages 10-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In 1938, eleven-year-old Oliver Ogilvie and his widowed father live comfortably in Cairo, Illinois, sharing a passion for model trains. As the Depression deepens, the bank takes their house and beloved train layout. Mr. Ogilvie heads to California looking for work; unhappily, Oliver remains behind with his aunt. Befriended and tutored by Mr. Applegate, a former math/physics teacher and current night watchman at the bank, Oliver finds solace visiting his trains, now on display at the bank. One night, robbers break in to the bank and shoot Mr. Applegate, whose last instruction to Oliver is, "Jump!" As quick as you can say "all aboard," Oliver finds himself on a full-sized train, heading to a future California. Carefully, but never tediously, Wells immerses the reader in details, creating such a believable situation that it's a small leap of faith to jump on a toy train traveling through time; Mr. Applegate's scientific theories validate the action. A sprinkling of historical figures -- a movie actor named Dutch; a famed director of mysteries, Mr. H; and the freckled-faced young son of Joe Kennedy -- adds clever authenticity, although it's not necessary to identify these people to follow the narrative. Wells, in complete control of every plot twist, conducts one glorious, high-speed ride. Full-color illustrations not seen. betty carter (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Eleven-year-old Oscar's life is disrupted when the stock market crash of 1929 forces his father to leave Illinois to find work in California. It's a devastating loss exacerbated by the selling off of their beloved train set. Then Oscar meets a mysterious stranger named Mr. Applegate, and their intersection with a bank robbery creates a mystical moment in which Oscar escapes harm by somehow leaping into a model train. He is whisked off to California but when he gets there, he is 21 years old. Helped by his similarly aged father, Alfred Hitchcock, and Joan Crawford's maid (seriously!), Oscar makes another magical journey, only this time he overshoots home and ends up 6 years old in New York. The plot's Twilight Zone potential the intriguing concept of a spectral train providing haven for unhappy children is not thoroughly plumbed, and one wonders at the appeal of such a retro story. Hopefully, though, readers will be all-aboard this pleasing diversion. Ibatoulline's Rockwellian illustrations match the squeaky-clean text (even the word damned is bleeped).--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THEY'RE big, they're fast, they whistle loudly. So you wouldn't think trains needed a public relations campaign among the younger set. But it's undeniable that these behemoths have receded drastically from everyday American life. Two new, wonderfully illustrated books bank on trains' innate appeal while giving children a keener sense of their former glory and power. Rosemary Wells is best known for her "Max and Ruby" series, in which fluffy white rabbits with straight-standing ears behave uncannily like young humans. Along with writing and illustrating picture books featuring plenty of other animals, Wells has written well for every grade from kindergarten on up. Her latest book, "On the Blue Comet," makes for an ideal read-aloud, giving adults a chance to share in its excellent adventure. The story starts out nice and easy, allowing readers to settle in comfortably. But before too long, like any good ride, it takes unexpected turns and reaches breakneck speeds. It's 1929, and 9-year-old Oscar Ogilvie Jr. is living with his father in Cairo, Ill., where the two console themselves after Oscar's mother's death by spending hours with the model trains they've laid out in their basement. From a single loop of track and a homemade version of the Cairo station, they've built a miniature United States railroad system complete with Lionel Company replicas and mountains, tunnels and rivers. "Sometimes I would place my head sideways, ear down, on the grass of the layout," Oscar recalls. "I truly believed that if I wanted to, I could have just walked right into the Permagrass and onto a train. I could have dashed right up the steps of the Blue Comet and sped off into the wheaty night prairies with the Rocky Mountains looming just beyond." But when the stock market crashes, Oscar's world - and the safe miniature world of his beloved trains - comes apart. Oscar's father loses his job and heads to California to look for work; the bank seizes their house, and the bank president buys the train set. Worst of all, Oscar is left with his dour Aunt Carmen, who makes sardine casserole for dinner and forces Oscar to stir food coloring into the margarine so it will look like butter. Some salvation arrives in the form of an out-of-work schoolteacher, a genteel hobo who not only helps Oscar with his math homework but also explains Einstein's views of time travel. When Oscar witnesses a violent bank robbery on Christmas Eve 1931, he is plunged into a parallel universe that puts him on a time-bending transcontinental train ride. He's dropped into Los Angeles three weeks after Pearl Harbor, a boy trapped in a 21-year-old body with Uncle Sam on his tail. "I'm in the fifth grade," he protests to a lieutenant. "You can't draft me!" An appealing if often battered and bewildered narrator, Oscar will come out all right - but Wells never makes it obvious how she'll manage it. Her story is packed with inventive plotting, engaging descriptions and sharp dialogue, and a cast of characters including Hollywood figures like Alfred Hitchcock and Ronald Reagan, and real-life, pre-crash Wall Street titans. But all the supporting characters, even the undeniably charming "Dutch," come second to Oscar and the magic he finds in a series of sprawling model-train landscapes. Bagram Ibatoulline's illustrations pay tribute to Norman Rockwell's gorgeous paintings of the everyday. We see the folds in clothes, Aunt Carmen's fussy ceramics collection, the worn paint on a bench and other humble details. Striking double-page panoramas are devoted to Oscar, redheaded with a chronic cowlick, and his magnificent trains. In the last of these, Oscar stands dumbfounded before the massive layout Joan Crawford has had built for her son (upon the rock of their house's foundation, no less). Crawford herself doesn't appear in "On the Blue Comet," but Wells and Ibatoulline's entertaining evocation of silverscreen and steel-train glamour brings to mind that Norma Desmond line from "Sunset Boulevard" about the golden age of actresses: "We had faces." Now only trains named Thomas do. LIKE "On the Blue Comet," Gordon Titcomb's picture book "The Last Train" fondly evokes a time when train depots were the hub of their communities and the "big iron horses" were regular attractions. The book's narrator comes from a railroad family - his grandfather was an engineer and his father a stationmaster - and he has the memorabilia to prove it, including a model train, a union card and an old ticket punch. Based on a 2005 song by Titcomb, the text is laid out in rhymes that alternately recall the past ("I'm riding on the City of New Orleans,/Thinking 'bout the Wabash Cannonball./Oooooh ... Midnight Flyer,/Hear that lonesome freight train whistle call") and lament the current state of the railroad line ("Now the tracks that shone like silver/have turned to rusty brown./Thirty years ago the last train rolled through town"). The sentiment gets melancholy, if not maudlin, but Wendell Minor's watercolors impart a crispness to the present-day images and lend majesty to the past. Flattened coins on the track look as if they're ready to be picked up, the railroad workers are skilled and strong, and the deep blue of an engine car has a ghostly translucence. Just as the trains are phantoms, Minor presents the young narrator in a haze of memory, his back facing the reader until the final page. There he admires the watch his father received for 20 years of service. With his faithful depictions of the men who got the trains up and running and the impressive machines themselves, Minor brings the past back to life and lets nostalgia serve the higher purpose of firing the imagination. Abby McGanney Nolan reviews children's books for The Washington Post.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Eleven-year-old Oscar and his father share a love for model trains and they set up an elaborate layout in their basement. After the Crash of 1929, Oscar's dad loses the house and the trains to the bank. The boy is sent to live with his aunt while his father goes to look for work in California. One day, while Oscar is visiting his trains which have been set up in the bank's Christmas display, he jumps into the train setup to avoid armed bank robbers and is catapulted through time and across the country. On the journey he meets famous people from the future and past as he searches for a way back to his own time and home. Malcolm Hillgartner reads Rosemary Wells's interesting and heartwarming story (Candlewick, 2010) in a pleasant, fatherly tone, giving each character a unique voice. However, it's disappointing that he doesn't consistently change Oscar's voice when time travel causes him to grow older or younger. Hillgartner attempts some celebrity impressions of the Hollywood stars and famous people mentioned in the book, but they will be lost on anyone under the age of 40. This audiobook does not reach the level of another time travel novel, Edward Bloor's London Calling (Knopf, 2006; Listening Library, 2006).-Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Time travel hurts. Eleven-year-old Oscar Ogilvie, Jr., first discovers this when he--dodging bullets in an armed robbery--belly-dives into a model train layout at the First National Bank of Cairo, Ill., on Christmas Eve 1931 and, miraculously, finds himself aboard a real train headed for California with the dashing future president "Dutch." Next stop: Oscar is a strapping 21-year-old in danger of being the first fifth grader drafted into the U.S. Army! Oscar's top-notch at any age, and his close relationship with his father (a fellow model-train fanatic) is the heart of this buoyant, mostly Depression-era romp. Abundant historical and literary allusions--and a cast of real-life characters from Joan Crawford to Alfred Hitchcock--enrich the story (though they may be lost on some). Even when the novel teeters on didacticism's edge, readers will be disarmed by Oscar's compassionate nature, amused by his colorful, well-sketched friends and captivated by his "Triumphs and Disasters" (from Kipling's poem "If," affectionately referenced). Ibatouilline's full-color, atmospheric Norman Rockwelllike vignettes enhance the nostalgic feel of this warm, cleverly crafted adventure. (Historical fiction/time travel. 11 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
