ENGINE NUMBER SEVEN

In a story tradition as nostalgic as the old narrow gauge railroad, Dot and Sam help Grandpa Hobbs save their town's locomotive by turning it out to rescue schoolchildren stranded in a snowstorm. The locomotive's chief enemy, gas station owner Mr. Bodger who always wants to ""get things done,"" is sufficiently exasperating to make sure our sympathies are in the right place. But it's Robert Quackenbush's scratchboard illustrations--a laid back variation on primer-style realism--that keep this little anachronism puffing cheerfully along.