The Railway Children (Puffin Classics)
by E. Nesbit
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Book Summary Information
Author: E. NesbitIllustrator: C. E. Brock
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-11-01
ISBN: 0140366717
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Puffin
Book Reviews of The Railway Children (Puffin Classics)
Book Review: A new life
Summary: 5 Stars
Roberta (known mostly as Bobbie), Peter, and Phyllis (we never learn their last names) are English siblings living in a London housing development in 1905. Their father works in a government office and their mother writes stories, and they have a pleasant, comfortable life--until, quite without warning, their beloved "daddy" vanishes out of their ken and they and their mother move out to the country, to a house called Three Chimneys near a railway line. Suddenly they're "poor," their mother is trying to support them by her pen, and nobody seems to know when their father will come back. But the railroad, whose engines become dragons with names owing to their way of bursting out of a nearby tunnel, makes up for much of the strangeness, and they make several adult friends too--the local stationmaster, his porter Mr. Perks, and "the old gentleman" who regularly rides one of the passing trains. As the months go by, an imperilled train, a lost and bewildered Russian, their mother's sudden illness, and eventually Bobbie's inadvertant discovery of the facts about Father's fate test their courage and resourcefulness.
E. Nesbit is probably best known for her fantasies, especially those starring the Five Children (Five Children and It (Puffin Classics), The Phoenix and the Carpet (Puffin classics), The story of the Amulet), but she could also write stories about ordinary, contemporary British children, and this one is described as "perhaps the most enduring." Modern readers may be confused by some of the references (hint: the "war" Mother refers to is the Russo-Japanese, arbitrated by our own Teddy Roosevelt), and will certainly disapprove of the children's not being told the truth at the very start, but the characters are lively and sympathetic, including Mother, who could be a later incarnation of the resourceful and cheerful wife in The Swiss Family Robinson (Signet Classics). And Nesbit knew how children think and behave: hers are very real--they quarrel occasionally, they don't always do right, but they try. This edition includes the original C. E. Brock pen-and-ink illustrations.
Summary of The Railway Children (Puffin Classics)
When Father has to go away for a time, the three children and their mother leave their London house and go to live in a small house in the country. They seek solace in the nearby railway station, making friends with Perks the porter and with the station master himself. But the mystery remains: where is their father and is he ever going to return?Classics by Age Books
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