STEAM, SMOKE, AND STEEL

This historical survey depicts the changing technology and appearance of locomotives from the 1830s to the 1990s. O’Brien (Gigantic! How Big Were the Dinosaurs?, 1999, etc.) uses the device of a first person account of a fictional young boy whose ancestors are all train engineers. Beginning in the present and going backward in time, vignettes about a circus train, a Jessie James holdup, and a race between a stagecoach and an early locomotive are interspersed with technical information about trains and building the rails of the period. The illustrations help the reader see not only the changing locomotives but also the changing styles of clothing and architecture. A cat in the first picture looks directly at the reader, almost as if asking the reader to accompany her to the past. Her forebears look on in many of the illustrations, leading the eye to details in the watercolor and gouache paintings. The soft-focus style illustrating scenes in the past becomes sharper when depicting technical information. This fictional family may give a sense of time for youngsters, but the mixture of the fictional with the historical leads to questions about the facts. Did a woman really become an engineer in the 1930s? Was there a race between a train and a horse and carriage? How could an engineer make sure that no one got hurt during a train robbery? A pleasant book for the casual reader but not enough substance for the real train enthusiast. (Nonfiction. 4-9)