Huffing, puffing, smoking railroad engines appear majestically in Michael McCurdy's fine scratchboard and watercolor illustrations of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Verla Kay's history lesson is set out in spare lines of verse: "Railroad barons, / Visions, dreams. / Thinking, planning, / Plotting schemes." Most of the book follows the actual labor of constructing the railroad, especially through the challenging Sierra terrain ("Rugged mountains, / Giant rifts. / Ragged, jagged, / Rocky cliffs"). McCurdy provides fascinating detail and striking, bold vistas, conveying the dramatic scale of the enterprise. Viewers are left to wonder how the huge trestles were set into the landscape, but the Chinese laborers swaying in baskets as they chisel the mountain face, and the tents and barracks buried in snow, tell much about human endurance. Anyone with the least interest in trains will be enthralled with the huge barracks riding on flatcars, the snowplow structure covering the whole engine, and the elegant old passenger trains. As in Kay's first Western saga, Gold Fever (rev. 3/99), the verse moves events briskly along, allowing the artist ample space for expanding the accou...Huffing, puffing, smoking railroad engines appear majestically in Michael McCurdy's fine scratchboard and watercolor illustrations of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Verla Kay's history lesson is set out in spare lines of verse: "Railroad barons, / Visions, dreams. / Thinking, planning, / Plotting schemes." Most of the book follows the actual labor of constructing the railroad, especially through the challenging Sierra terrain ("Rugged mountains, / Giant rifts. / Ragged, jagged, / Rocky cliffs"). McCurdy provides fascinating detail and striking, bold vistas, conveying the dramatic scale of the enterprise. Viewers are left to wonder how the huge trestles were set into the landscape, but the Chinese laborers swaying in baskets as they chisel the mountain face, and the tents and barracks buried in snow, tell much about human endurance. Anyone with the least interest in trains will be enthralled with the huge barracks riding on flatcars, the snowplow structure covering the whole engine, and the elegant old passenger trains. As in Kay's first Western saga, Gold Fever (rev. 3/99), the verse moves events briskly along, allowing the artist ample space for expanding the account. Kay's text leaves the reader a bit off track at times as she compresses complex information into verse that is minimal to the point of confusion; some points only become clear in the concluding author's note. In collaboration with McCurdy's eloquent illustrations, though, it's a strong, memorable taste of events that will surely enliven many a social studies lesson. Illustrations and simple rhyming text depict the race to construct railroads across the country during the second half of the nineteenth century.(展開)
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