by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 10, 2010

"I Dream of Trains" shares some American history, a story of hope, and of course, trains. But it's written in a simple style that's personal and even poetic. It tells the story of a sharecropper in Mississippi in the year 1900, who's inspired by the Casey Jones, the legendary railroad engineer. On the back cover, illustrator Loren Long calls the story's narration "visual and truly meaningful," adding that when she first read it, "countless images flew into my head."

Like the famous engineer, a young sharecropper shares that he "dream of trains too. As the Mississippi morning gets hotter and red dirt sticks to my feet, making them heavy, While the pickin' hurts my back..." Long draws the boy looking out from under his straw hat thoughtfully - with a cotton field in the background. And then she shows him at the end of the day, balancing on the rails and imagining that he's talking to the train's crew.

Author Angela Johnson consulted the historian at the Casey Jones Home and Railroad Museum in Tennessee, and decided that in his day, the engineer must've been a symbol. She notes a historical fact - engineer Casey Jones had a distinctive whistle, and was also known to work with a black fireman named Sim Webb. And then Johnson imagines Casey's whistle giving hope to the sharecroppers along his route. "[T]he fact that Irish Casey worked side by side with black Webb probably did much to fuel the imaginations of a people who still remembered the sting of slavery and longed for an opportunity to be seen as equals with their fellow Americans," she writes in a note at the back of the book. And she wonders how many blacks migrating out of their oppressive towns "got the idea to flee North from watching Casey's majestic engine?"

The boy imagines working with Casey and Webb, "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...." The imaginary journey gets some spectacular illustrations, like the train curving across a field or an overhead view of the engine pulling into a depot. The boy even gets a chance to toot the whistle when Casey "lifts me up toward the magic." But his father tells him that the train's whistle is the sound of leaving, and adds that "Casey Jones must know."

Each summer the boy waits for Casey's engine to return and "dream me away." But instead, the author turns to that famous rainy night in the year 1900. The illustrator draws a frightened brakeman, hurrying through the rain with a lantern to try to stop the oncoming engine. "Papa says they found him with the brake still in his hand..."

But his father comforts him by describing the oceans and mountains and cities that he'll see himself someday.

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