Iron Horses

Dedicated to all my train-loving readers: Have you ever wandered how the transcontinental railroad was built?  "Transcontinental Railroad?" you ask.  It was the joining of the American west's Central Pacific Railroad to the east's Union Pacific Railroad so that citizens could travel from one coast to the next in a matter of days rather than months.

Discover this train race afresh with Verla Kay's simple rhyming text and Michael McCurdy's signature illustrations in Iron Horses (c. 1999).

Lucy's Summer

Based on a true story, Donald Hall weaves Lucy's Summer (c. 1995) from the stories he heard as a child.  Michael McCurdy crafts his sketchboard illustrations to look like woodcuts.  Here are the opening lines:
   Lucy Wells lived on a farm in New Hampshire with her mother Kate, her father Wesley, and her little sister Caroline.
   The spring of 1910, when Lucy was seven, her mother turned the front parlor into a millinery shop, to sell hats to her neighbors in the backcountry.