Module 3: Locomotive - Caldecott Winners

Book Summary:

The book chronicles the journey of a mother and her two children as they leave Omaha, Nebraska heading west to meet their father in California where they will make their new home. The book talks about the workers and passengers who are on the train.  The book train journey describes the way that the train functions and the  job responsibilities of the train workers so that the journey is safe.  The illustrations are used along with the text to tell the story and educate the reader about the history of the Locomotive and its place in this countries history and growth.

APA Reference:

Flocam B (2013). Locomotive. New York, NY: Antheneum.

Impressions:

This is a beautiful book and what a great way to teach children about the history of trains in the United States.  The illustrations are beautiful and they add so much texture to the story.  I learned  a lot about trains while reading this book.  I knew the story about Promontory Point and the joining of the two railroads, but I did not know very much about the workings of the steam engines. For example, I did not realize that some ran on coal and some on wood.  I was also impressed and grossed out by the restroom situations but I guess it would have been better just to have the hole empty out onto the tracks as they traveled along.  The endpapers which are a reproductions of a newspaper advertisement were another added bonus and it was awesome to see the routes and read about the cities.  The back has a drawing of a steam engine with the part labeled and a description given of their importance and the role that they play in the workings of engine.

Professional Review:

Talk about a youth librarian’s dream come true: a big new book about those ever-popular trains from a bona fide picture-book-nonfiction all-star. Striking cinematic endpapers lay the groundwork, describing the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. Then, in a sort of historical fiction-meets-travelogue narrative, Floca zeroes in on one family’s journey from Omaha to San Francisco. Floca excels at juxtaposing sweeping panoramas with intimate, slice-of-life moments: here a widescreen shot of the train chugging across the Great Plains; later a vignette at a “dollar for dinner” hash house (“If the chicken tastes like prairie dog, don’t ask why,” cautions the narrator). Varied font sizes and styles on the large pages beautifully capture the onomatopoeia (“Hisssssssss”; “huff huff huff ”; “chugchug chug-chug chug-chug”) of the train and the feel of the Old West. One spread finds the train precariously crossing a trestle (“The train is so heavy, the bridge is so narrow, and rickety rickety rickety!”); the concluding ricketys are displayed in an appropriately jarring shadowed font alongside a picture of passengers shaking—and praying—in their seats. Luckily, our family makes it safely to its destination: “the country’s far corners have been pulled together… thanks to the locomotive.” An author’s note and thorough discussion of the sources used are included, and don’t miss the back endpapers—the steam power diagram would make David Macaulay proud.

Bloom, S. (2013). Locomotive. Horn Book Magazine, 89(5), 121.

Library Uses:

This book could be used to teach basic research skills about how to extract information from informational text.  This book could also be used to demonstrate what onomatopoeia with all of the sounds that are used to for the train.