Hiawatha Passing - Hardcover

Hagen, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805018328 ISBN 13: 9780805018325

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 1995

Synopsis

"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 at his grandparents’ farmhouse." --Kirkus Reviews, pointer

About this title

From School Library Journal

PreSchool-Grade 3?A boy wakes up in his grandparents' farmhouse, hearing "a low, distant sound." It gets louder, and finally a steam engine appears. It's the Hiawatha, a fast passenger train. Full-color oil paintings capture the splendor of the passing train through the use of intriguing perspectives. One scene shows the boy's view out the window through the "porthole" made by his breath on the frozen glass. A striking full-page illustration shows a head-on view of the huge and bright approaching headlight surrounded by darkness. The progression of pages brings the locomotive gradually closer, larger, and faster, until it passes and is shown again from a distance. Hagen's generally spare narrative sets the scene fairly well. Like the illustrations, the words reflect the boy's point of view, though in a couple of instances the ideas seem overstated. He imagines the rails "throbbing with energy and promise," for example, sounding more like a reminiscing adult than an amazed child. Similar in mood and appeal to Jim Aylesworth's Country Crossing (Atheneum, 1991) and Jonathan London's The Owl Who Became the Moon (Dutton, 1993), Hiawatha Passing captures the undeniable excitement of a roaring train in middle of the night.?Steven Engelfried, West Linn Public Library, OR
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

A train passes in the night-despite this extremely simple plot line, Hagen and Shue's debut is a picture book of considerable beauty and power. Spending the night at his grandparents' "tin-roofed farmhouse," a boy hears a train coming. He peers out the spot he's cleared in the frost-covered window ("like a pirate squinting into a spyglass"), sees faces in the train windows and wonders about them. As the train speeds away, "a shooting star etched a brilliant trail across the velvet black sky." Simple, yes, but Hagen and Shue swathe this tale in the wonder and magic of a child seeing the ordinary as extraordinary: "The rails began to hum. He could almost imagine them turning to color: changing from cold lifeless black to brilliant flame orange, throbbing with energy and promise." Shue's oils-inspired, he says, by Edward Hopper-superbly capture the night's enchanted mood, telling little and suggesting much. Inspired by the train called the Hiawatha, the world's fastest locomotive when it was introduced in 1935, this book should hook train lovers of all ages. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0805018328
• ISBN 13: 9780805018325
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Shue Kenneth