Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

MacArthur Award winner Johnson (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Heaven; <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Toning the Sweep) pens a reverie as piercing and poignant as the long cry of a train whistle against debut artist Long's breathtaking backdrops. As the African-American boy narrator toils in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, he hears a train speed past with the legendary engineer Casey Jones at the controls. Transported, he imagines sitting beside his hero in the cab of the 382 train "as the engine carries us past the delta and across the plains./ Over the mountains, past the desert and to the ocean—far away from here." Johnson's words, melodic and introspective, evoke the boy's longing for a better life ("Short days, cold days,/ turn back into long, warm planting days,/ …/ I still stare at the tracks and wait for Casey and his/ engine to come flying past the fields/ and dream me away"). Landscapes of purple mountains, stretches of aqua seas, rivers and rolling farmland are all connected by the tracks Casey travels. Long plays with perspective, using aerial views as the boy soars above his life in his daydreams (he crosses the Mississippi on a bridge of railroad ties, the shadow of his imagined hero beside him) and intimate close-ups as the boy returns to the reality of his life. Casey's massive, almost ghostly train becomes a powerful symbol; the train wreck that kills the famous conductor on April 30, 1900, screeches with drama. "Does that mean it's over?" the devastated boy asks his father. Johnson reassures young readers, through the father's reply, that dreams can still take wing. When the boy imagines boarding a train to leave his home, years hence, he says: "I will... remember as I roll away/ what Papa said about Casey/ and his soul-speaking whistles/ and my place in the big wide world." This theme of hope born of aching loss, and the ability of dreams to uplift and transform, speaks to every child who has ever had a hero. Ages 5-7. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Sept.)

ALA Booklist (Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)

To escape his backbreaking work in the Mississippi cotton fields, a young, nineteenth-century African American boy dreams of trains. His hero is Casey Jones, who, with his black engineer Sims Web, sounds a soul-speaking whistle as he drives his engines past the boy's fields, dreaming me away. When Jones is killed in a wreck, loving Papa fills the boy with confidence that he'll still be able to explore the big, wide world, even without Casey. Children may struggle with the sense of some of Johnson's spare poetic lines: We are where we were and who we are, for example. But even if they can't grasp the full meaning, they will easily connect with the boy's deep yearning to escape and the quiet, atmospheric beauty of the language. Long's powerful acrylic paintings give an immediate sense of the boy's world: the sorrow of the workers in the hot fields; the thrill of the mighty, streaking trains; and the joy of imagined adventures. An interesting author's note adds more history about Casey Jones and the Great Migration.

Horn Book (Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)

Curry has carefully researched and sensitively retold tales from fourteen Native American nations. Attractive pencil drawings enhance the stories, which were originally told to explain physical phenomena and events and to teach lessons of discipline and self-respect. Included are brief notes on the Indian nations and source notes for the twenty-six tales.

Kirkus Reviews

In this poetic reverie, a sharecropper's son dreams of riding with Casey Jones and his fireman Sim Webb. The whistle of passing trains stirs something in the child: "Papa says it's the sound of leaving that speaks to my soul." In Long's stately paintings, done in dark browns and golds, Casey and Sim stand heroically, their oversized steam engine hurtles past like a storm cloud to its tragic end, and the child, always with an inward look, moves with his equally heroic father from cotton fields, through seasons, to an eventual, long-wished-for farewell on a train platform. In her afterword, Johnson suggests a link between the trains that Jones and his fellow engineers drove through the Mississippi Delta at the turn of the 20th century and the urge to go that sparked the Great Migration. Perhaps—but the dream of boarding a train to find one's "place in the big wide world" is one that echoes through every generation. (Picture book. 7-9)

School Library Journal (Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)

Gr 3-5 This powerfully illustrated picture book looks at legendary engineer Casey Jones through the eyes of a fictional black child who toils in a cotton field near the railroad tracks. In low, reverential tones, the text speaks both of the folk hero's mystique and the narrator's eagerness to experience Casey's big world. The man's status as a pioneering symbol of harmonious race relations appears within the story and in an eloquent epilogue suitable for older readers. Johnson's treatment of Casey's tragic, heroic death is particularly respectful and moving. Long's moody acrylic paintings, mainly in subdued tones, are a sterling accompaniment to the book's provocative prose. Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC