by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 17, 2010

"Railroad John and the Red Rock Run" could've been a delightful book. It's got some wonderful old-timey illustrations drawn in a quaint brown and yellow. Illustrator Michael Austin even thanks his mother in the book's introduction "for the trunk of old photos and the loads of crazy family stories that go with them." His realistic railroad drawings make the story feel real, as the train plows through challenging weather or squeals to a halt on a rickety wooden bridge.

I was excited when I realized the book's author was a professional poet named Tony Crunk. He uses imaginative "sound" words to describe the rumble of the wheels, like "lickety-whoop and whoopety-lick". But he really seemed to struggle when it came to creating interesting characters. As the train picks up its two passengers - Granny Apple Fritter and Lonesome Bob - it began to seem like Crunk was just slapping together old western cliches. Bob is taking the train to marry Wildcat Annie, and the engineer's response seems strangely generic.

"'Well, it's a mighty fine day for marrying!' said Railroad John."

Lonesome Bob sings a song after he boards the train, as the story rambles along through its slow beginning. You'd think a professional poet could come up with something better than this.

"Oh, I been lonesome all my life, but I'll nevermore lonesome be.
For I'm headin' to Red Rock to meet my bride. Wildcat Annie's the girl for me."

The characters are kind of an afterthought, because the real focus of the story is whether the train can adhere to its time schedule. And the first setback arrives when an outlaw steals the train's coal. But the excitement of the outlaw is gone by the next page, and the reader is returned to the story of how the engineer can now address his lack of fuel. "'Well, this is a vexation," says Railroad John - anticlimactically.

Granny Apple offers some muffins she's baked for the wedding feast which - inexplicably - are able to fuel the train just as well as coal. ("Now, don't you worry Railroad!")  I think that's emblematic of the book's biggest problems: the characters just feel like they're added on to keep the plot moving forward.  In the illustrations, they're even depicted in weird, oversized 3-D models, which are sometimes creepy and not particularly endearing. And it's a longer-than-usual children's book - the text drags on for 32 crowded pages.

Railroad John confronts a washed out bridge, a cow on the tracks, and eventually a tornado to get to the wedding on time. But the best part about the ending of the book, for me, was that it also includes a recipe for Granny Apple Fritters' Hard-Shell Chili-Pepper Corn Pone Muffins. Unfortunately, the recipe includes some misdirecting instructions, like "preheat over to 1250 degrees" and ingredients like 1 teaspoon of "pure dragon's tooth extract."

But it was still more interesting than the story that preceded it.

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