My Brother's Train

Christine Linge is a past director of the Toronto & District Parent
Co-operative Preschool Corporation, a freelance writer, and a bookseller
specializing in children’s literature.

In the company of her brother, a girl takes a dreamlike journey in an
old steam train. The kind brother gives her the window seat, shows her
the mythical giant train man who runs behind the train, and pulls her
aboard when she lingers on the platform. He tells her that the galloping
white horse she sees will bring her luck, and encourages her to look far
ahead for the first sight of the mountains. At the journey’s end, he
introduces her to her great-aunt Muriel, who lives in a cottage by the
sea. When she is ready to leave,

her brother helps her catch the train in time. We leave them in the
dining car, eating “dessert spectacular.”

Heather Kellerhals-Stewart has created a magical dream tale with a
delicious sense of mind-expanding surrealism, capable of reaching the
reader on many levels. Tunnels, wild horses, and protective invisible
giants populate a journey that can be understood as an analogy for the
acquisition of knowledge. Abstract and lacking in all sensation but
sight, it contrasts with the highly sensory stay at Muriel’s cottage
(real life). It can also be read as a spiritual journey into Nature,
into which it is “easy to go but harder to come back”

Paul Zwolak painstakingly researched the trains of the 1930s to achieve
an authentic portrait of the magnificent machines that crossed this vast
continent. Yet his haunting images, shimmering in a cloud of steam and
night mist, whisper “truth is a multifaceted reality, sometimes best
understood in a dream vision.” Highly recommended.