Ghost Train - Hardcover

Yee, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0888992572 ISBN 13: 9780888992574

Publisher: Groundwood Books, 1996

Synopsis

Left behind in China by her father, who has gone to North America to find work, Choon-yi has made her living by selling her paintings in the market. When her father writes one day and asks her to join him, she joyously sets off, only to discover that he has been killed. Choon-yi sees the railway and the giant train engines that her father died for, and she is filled with an urge to paint them. But her work disappoints her until a ghostly presence beckons her to board the train where she meets the ghosts of the men who died building the railway. Will Choon-yi find a way to make peace with her father's death? Ghostly, magical, and redeeming, this masterful tale is superbly illustrated by Harvey Chan.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Yee was born in Spalding, Saskatchewan, and grew up in Vancouver's Chinatown. A former archivist, he now writes full time. His books have won many awards and honors, including the Governor General's Award (Ghost Train), the Ruth Schwartz Award (Ghost Train and Roses Sing on New Snow), and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award (Tales from Gold Mountain). He has won the Vancouver Book Award and been shortlisted for the BC Book Prize, and his books have been named to several lists, including NYPL Books for the Teen Age (Dead Man’s Gold), ALA Notables and Booklist's Top Ten Historical Fiction. Paul lives in Toronto.

Harvey Chan immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong as a teenager. He has won the Ruth Schwartz Children's Book Award three times - with Paul Yee for Roses Sing on New Snow and Ghost Train, and for Music for the Tsar of the Sea by Celia Barker Lottridge. Harvey lives in Toronto, Ontario.

From Booklist

Gr. 3^-5. Dark, glowing oil paintings illustrate a moving fantasy about the Chinese workmen who died far from home building the railroad through the mountains of North America. The story, first published in Canada, is told through the eyes of a young girl, Choon-yi, born to poor peasants in southern China. She has only one arm, and her mother rejects her, but her father loves her dearly and encourages her artistic gift. When she is 12, he leaves for America to work on the railway being built through the mountains. After two years he sends her money to join him, but when she gets there, she learns of his death. He appears to her in a dream and asks her to paint him on the train he built. The full-page paintings show her traveling on the hurtling engines; we see the power of the railroad and the sorrow of the men who died building it, their clothing stained with mud and blood. This is a book to use with Rhoda Blumberg's Full Steam Ahead: The Race to Build the Transcontinental Railroad. Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0888992572
• ISBN 13: 9780888992574
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Chan Harvey