Trainstop (Hardcover)

by Barbara Lehman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2—In this wordless picture book, illustrations done in watercolor, gouache, and ink present the fanciful story of a child's train trip. A girl and her parents board a subway that travels aboveground through a cityscape and then plunges into a tunnel. When the train again emerges into the light, the window suddenly reveals a view of a green countryside with houses and a windmill in the distance. A man wearing striped pants and holding a straw hat brings the train to a halt with a long, bannerlike flag. The child disembarks and is welcomed by a group of miniature people. They lead her to a tree where a plane and its presumed pilot are entangled. With help from a little person, the youngster rescues both the plane and pilot. Waving good-bye, she returns to the train and eventually disembarks with her parents at their urban home. The pilot and a friend fly to her building, giving the girl a gift to commemorate her adventure. The plot of the narrative illustrations is easy to follow. The artwork varies in size from six panels per page to full spreads. The characters' facial features are kept to a minimum, but the placement of dot eyes, dot noses, and line mouths clearly presents their emotions. Lehman's simple fantasy offers a positive lesson on helping others that will stretch readers' imaginations.—Lynn K. Vanca, Akron-Summit County Public Library, Richfield, OH
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From Booklist
As in previous picture books, including the Caldecott Honor Book The Red Book (2004), Lehman’s spare, inviting artwork tells a wordless story about a child’s daydream. Panels in shifting sizes show a little girl boarding a train with her parents and gazing out the windows at a gray city. After the train enters a tunnel, and the windows darken, the girl’s imagination fills in the view. Suddenly, a summer meadow appears, the train makes a stop, and the girl disembarks into a crowd of Lilliputian folk, who lead her to a pint-size aviator lodged, along with his glider, in a small tree. The girl rescues the tiny fellow and returns to the train, leaving the green world behind. Back in the city, she follows her parents home, but a surprise visit from her miniature friends continues her whimsical dream. Once again, Lehman’s spacious, boldly outlined pictures tell a deceptively simple story that demands repeated visits as it seemlessly captures a child’s joyful wandering between reality and imagined play. Preschool-Grade 2. --Gillian Engberg

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (April 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061875640X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618756407
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 7.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #254,147 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars next stop, fantasy and perhaps a bit of a message), March 13, 2008

By	delzey (new england) - See all my reviews

On a train trip between cityscapes young girls watches as her view in a black tunnel is replaced by a vibrant countryside. When the train is flagged down mysteriously the girl notices she is the only one on the train who isn't asleep. Stepping off the train she finds a group of people gathered around a tree where a person and their plane have become lodged. What isn't apparent until she reaches the tree is that the people are all tiny, as if the remained frozen the height they were from her train window perspective. While the people are as real as the girl, the plane in the tree is one of those balsa wood planes with a rubber band powering the propeller. Once she has rescued the tiny pilot she returns to the train and resumes her ride home, out the of the fantasy and out of the tunnel, back to the city where she lives.

Out in front of her townhouse, standing in her stone yard, she looks up and sees the rescued pilot and a co-pilot flying toward her. They come with a gift of thanks, a small seedling for an apple tree that is planted in the crack in her stone yard. As a parting shot the girl sits on her stoop admiring her now-grown tree while all over the city other trees have begun sprouting up, no doubt from kindred daydreaming souls looking to return nature to the cities.

Lehman set herself an impossible bar with The Red Book a few years back and, unfairly perhaps, everything since has been measured against that amazing snake-eating-its-tale fantasy. If the impression -- mine at least -- was that her subsequent books (Museum Trip, Rainstorm) were increasingly weaker attempts to capture lighting in a bottle, Trainstop manages to stand apart from the others, on its own and with very sturdy legs. As with her previous books Lehman mines the theme of a child's daydream world, but here the idea of an fantasy taking place while the rest of the world sleeps, coupled with the message of bringing nature back to the cities, is perhaps the strongest, most direct message delivered yet. Where in previous books the children imagine or discover worlds for their own purposes and keeping, Trainstop gives us a child looking to share her fantasy with the world. It's almost a subtle environmental message, a quiet Lorax making a last call on those with eyes and ears enough to still listen.

For those unfamiliar with Lehman's work, the book is as wordless as her previous books, filled with the same thick-outlined ligne claire illustrations that are her trademark. Probably the simplest of her picture books to date, but no less engaging. I think what I'd really like to see is what Lehman can do with the long-form: graphic novels. Her sense of pacing, her imagination, I think make her an ideal candidate for an extended fantasy romp a la Sara Varon's Robot Dreams or, on a more picture book level, Regis Faller's The Adventures of Polo.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great book, April 12, 2008

By	Willy Nilly (the South) - See all my reviews

Lehman does it again. The illustrations are luminous and the story engaging enough for all ages. My little ones love her books, and my big ones do too.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous book, January 6, 2009

By	stella (usa) - See all my reviews

this is a wonderful book! as are all of barbara lehman's others. i highly recommend it.