Eleven-year-old Oscar time-travels on a Lionel toy train in this creative and imaginative story that combines historical fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy, set during the Depression.

Well done, highly recommended. ( )

Great book! ( )

I thought this a VERY irritating book. It started so well, with a finely crafted portrait of a bereaved father and son, withdrawing into a private world after a devastating loss. Then...

SPOILERS!!

The story veers into fantasy. The boy, Oscar, goes from being a self-sufficient boy who takes it upon himself to cook for a hungry stranger, to a helpless waif over whom the rest of the plot washes like ocean waves. The mechanism for the sudden ability to travel by toy train is poorly explained. Is it something the mysterious Mr. Applegate engineers? ( pun intended) Is it a magic word? Is it built in to the trains themselves, and triggered in a moment of great need? Maybe. But another character who manages this trick has neither the help of a mysterious stranger nor the a magic word nor the urgency of young Oscar.

The author has littered the story with historical characters. Most readers in the target age group for this book have never heard of most of them, and so the little winky winky scene with Oscar encountering a golly-gee all-American young actor named Dutch will completely go over their heads. ("You're not a politician, are you?" I asked Dutch. "Not in a pig's ear!" said Dutch.)

I couldn't even figure out a consistent political view, if the author intended one in a book hero-worshipping Ronald Reagan. All the fat cat pre-Depression Wall Street businessmen are greedy, but Wells also features a sneering, stuck-up teenage John F. Kennedy.



The cloyingly sweet descriptions of Dutch made me roll my eyes. He was "clearly a young man of character" and "just having him on the train made me feel safe all over." The book is full of such snap judgements: Oscar instantly trusts Ronald Reagan based on a handshake; another character lets complete strangers into the mansion in her care because one of them "has such an honest face." Oscar instantly trusts a stranger at the door because he's clean-shaven and is carrying a thick book. Well, good, this all saves having to read any character development...

Then there's the appearance of the mysterious Chinese lady, Miss Chow, who refers to herself in the third person and speaks in an astonishingly breathless, stereotyped way: "Miss Chow hears everything!" Thanks goodness she has a mysterious hypnotic stone that will let Oscar remember all the details of a robbery locked away in his memory! "Chinese method going back two thousand years!"

The most annoying thing was what this book lacked. Our hero manages to travel forward and backward in time in his quest to be reunited with his father. He manages to change the personal history of a recently acquired friend. But seriously, it never occurs to him to try to stop the accident that killed his mother? ( )

Eleven-year-old Oscar Ogilvie lives in Cairo, Illinois with his father. The two share a love of model trains, and spend evenings working on their elaborate set up in the basement. The stock market crash of 1929 does not affect them immediately, but ultimately it causes his father to lose his job, the house, and the model train collection. Oscar Senior heads to California to look for work while his son moves in with a straightlaced aunt. The only joy in young Oscar's life is the time he spends with Mr. Applegate, a former math teacher who is also drifting around looking for work. One day, Oscar is at the bank where Mr. Applegate has gotten a job as the night guard. The train set that the Ogilvies lost ended up decorating the bank lobby, and the two enjoy spending time watching it run. When two armed robbers break into the bank, Mr. Applegate yells at Oscar to jump. He jumps-- right onto the train set, where he magically finds himself in a full-sized station and hops the first train that comes. The train catapults him 10 years into the future, so when he is reunited with his father in California, it is 1941 and the 11 year old Oscar (in a 21-year-old body) is in danger of being arrested for draft-dodging. A little reminiscent of Edward Bloor's "London Calling," Wells' story has enough going on that it could easily become convoluted, but she manages to keep the story moving and the reader engaged throughout as Oscar hops multiple trains in an effort to get back to his correct time period. The resolution is a little too pat, but overall, this is a charming story of adventure and the bond between father and son. Beautiful illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline help immerse readers in the 1930's and 1940's.
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