HIAWATHA PASSING

Hagen and Shue debut with a heartfelt evocation of a singular event: the passing of a train at night across a snowy midwestern landscape, as observed by a boy spending his first night in his grandparents' farmhouse. He hears the train first, then sees it— ``A string of box-shaped lights flew by, roaring and rattling. Within each box was a blurred face peering out into the night: framed pictures of midnight travelers.'' The text reads like a prose transcription of a lyric poem, with a sequence of poetic images. Luminous oils capture the still of the moonlit winter night and the train rumbling along the rails. That one or two minutes in real time has been turned into an unforgettable moment is no small feat; this has the mood of Robert Frost's ``On The Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind'' from the perspective of home and youth, looking out. (Picture book. 5-8)