by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 13, 2010

"Iron Horses" is three things - a children's book, a history lesson, and a poem. Author Verla Kay used the same format to describe the California Gold Rush of 1849 - showing pictures of the action, while describing it only with short rhyming couplets. ("Dashing westward, many miners. / Townsfolk snicker, 'Forty-niners.'") It seemed inevitable that she'd try a sequel, and this time, she focused on 1869 - and the train-filled excitement of the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

"Piercing whistles, shrieking wheels.
Hot steam hissing, High-pitched squeals..."

But the best thing about this book is its fascinating illustrations by Michael McCurdy. Publisher's Weekly described them as "scratchboard and watercolor," saying their stark beauty "has the feeling of old-fashioned woodcuts." The artist uses a black ink surface that's covered with a coating - and then "scratches" in shapes so they reappear in the underlying black ink. This is perfect for everything from the shadows of mountains to the coats of the railroad barons - and of course, the dark, iron train engines.

They really do resemble a 19th-century lithography, and they blend the excitement of each moment with an exotic sense of antiquity. And their mystery is only complemented by the author's two-word couplets, which make the narration seem almost breathless with anticipation.  ("Huffing, puffing, smoking stacks. Screeching, stopping, end of tracks.") Every page brings a new scene, usually in a new location and often even a different state. From the railroad's path, Kay shifts to the backrooms of the planners, and then to the halls of Congress. But surprisingly, this creates a "grounding" effect when the story finally returns to the men building the railroad.

"Survey parties, canvas tents.
Levels, transits - measurements."

But finally there's some rails on the ground - as depicted by McCurdy's spectacular black-tinted drawings of the construction cars moving through the plains. ("Thumping, bumping, ties and rails. Clanging, banging, spikes and nails...") It's all a little unsatisfying, though, since the stakes of the project weren't established.  When Kay described gold miners, readers instantly understood their frenzied motive - gold! But this book even misses its chance in the explanatory note on the book's last page. (It says that two rail lines competed over who could lay the most track - but in the book the excitement of this race is barely mention!)

There's pictures of people blastings cliffs, and pictures of other people hammering rails, but no characters ever emerge. And any stories you've heard about discrimination vanish in the space between Kay's simple rhyming couplets. ("Massive outcrop, blocking way. Chinese, long ropes, baskets sway...") It's a beautifully-illustrated book, but in the end it's just an engima. Readers learn what was built - a transcontinental railroad - but they never really meet the people who did the building...

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