William and the Night Train - Softcover

Kelly, Mij

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340732504 ISBN 13: 9780340732502

Publisher: Hodder Childrens, 2000

Synopsis

Everyone's aboard the night train and they're all sleepy heads, ready for bed, ready to ride the train to tomorrow. The train won't go until wide-awake William shuts his eyes too, but only William's mother can teach him the trick to make the train go.

About this title

About the Author

Mij Kelly is the author of several books for children. She lives in York, England. Alison Jay lives in London, England. She is also the creator of Picture This, hailed by Booklist for its "spectacular" illustrations.

From Publishers Weekly

A British team uses a train ride as a metaphor to describe the transition from waking to sleeping in this luxurious picture book. Despite the encouragement of the other passengersAdescribed in a locomotive rhythm ("teachers and jugglers, zookeepers, shopkeepers, writers and fighters, with babies in bundles and piglets in baskets")A"wide-awake William" shows no inclination to drift off. In Jay's (Picture This...) soothing illustrations, bathed in muted earth tones of soft terra cottas and moss greens, William and the other children create mild chaos. The hero runs from the freight car (where circus animals slumber) to the sleeping car (in which feathers fall like snowflakes from the children's pillow fight) to the caboose, until finally his mother cuddles him close and he falls asleep. Kelly's poetic text unspools in a seamless strand, twining scrumptious rhymes (the train's engine "filling the world with billows of steam,/ soft see-through clouds that turn into dreams") with nimble wordplay (William "squirms like a worm"; the train goes "lickety-split, helter-skelter, quick as a streak"). Jay exploits the train metaphor fully, including an engineer in pajamas and nightcap, a recurring sheep motif and a spread of the cars depicted as beds laid end to end, with the train's contents laid out horizontally. Book a ticket for this fanciful ride to dreamland. Ages 3-6. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hodder Childrens
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0340732504
• ISBN 13: 9780340732502
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32