My Favourite Railway Stories by Paul Jennings
This work is taken from the "My Favourite" series - favourite stories on different themes by different authors, each volume edited by a celebrity in the field. "Early in the morning we made our way to the railway station, just in time for the first air raid of the day. The first thing we had to do was to get steam up in a railway engine. There were more air raids, and it came on the rain, and two Greek deserters stole my car, and altogether things did not look very hopeful. But the needle on the pressure-gauge in the cabin of our engine was rising slowly, and at last, whistling excitedly, the ancient machine got under way. It was a majestic sight, and it would have been event more majestic if she had not gone backwards instead of forwards" - thus Peter Fleming recaptures, in the middle of a world war, the lively freshness of the pioneer days a century before. This invigorating anthology opens with the indomitable nineteenth-century engineers whose grand designs were driven through by sheer force or will. Flags, banners, huzzas, innumerable bands, and a great roar of steam as each new section of line is opened: these greet the advent of the railways. Splendid as a setting for Victorian drama ("D'ye know you're stopping the Silkminster Express?" "Thank God I have!"); enchanting as a background to children's stories ("Peter would give almost his ears to be in her place, on a real engine"); the railways became, above and beyond this, a rich field of symbol, metaphor and association for the great novelists. Tolstoy, Hardy, Kipling, Zola, all are represented here; so too, is L.T.C. Rolt describing the Abbots Ripton disaster; Humbert Simmons and the cheerful rogues he knew as a young clerk; Auden and Monro; E.V. Knox for comedy and J.B. Priestley for humour; and Paul Jennings himself walking the Colne Valley line: "Standing in the fields, hearing nothing but birds, the wind, the occasional far-off lorry, you have a curious intimation of what it was the railways destroyed - the sheer, brute mysterious fact of distance. You can sense what it was like here when the navvies came and laid those straight tracks a century ago. There is a mystery in all beginnings."
Jennings, Paul: - Paul Jennings is a phenomenon in the world of children's books. He has written more than one hundred stories, and sales of his books exceed 6.7 million copies. Since the publication of Unreal in 1985, he has been entertaining children of all ages with his tales of the strange and the fantastic, encouraging them to become enthusiastic, skilled readers. Paul has been voted 'favourite author' by children in Australia over forty times and has won every children's choice award in the country including the Young Australians' Best Book Award (YABBA) an amazing 15 times and the Kids Own Australian Literature Award (KOALA) 6 times. He is a 10-time winner of the Kids Reading Oz Choice Award (KROC) and in 2001 he was awarded the COOL Award for Coolest Book of the Decade for The Paw Thing. Paul Jennings worked as a special-education teacher, then speech pathologist, then became a university lecturer before turning to full-time writing. Helping children learn to read, particularly those with difficulties, has been a huge motivator throughout his career. In 1995 Paul was appointed a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to children's literature.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780718825294 |
| ISBN 10 | 0718825292 |
| Title | My Favourite Railway Stories |
| Author | Paul Jennings |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | James Clarke & Co Ltd |
| Year published | 1987-11-27 |
| Number of pages | 128 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |