The Sleeper Train
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
When a child is too excited to fall asleep on the night train, she tries thinking about all the places she’s ever slept in this comforting moonlit adventure. Just as it’s starting to get dark, a child and her family board the sleeper train, where they’ll travel through the night and reach their destination in the morning. But as the train rocks from side to side, rolling through the vast Indian countryside, the child can’t sleep. It’s all too thrilling! So instead, she thinks of all the different places she has peacefully slept, from that cozy spot on Mom and Dad’s bed, to a seaside hotel, to a tent in a field, to Mom’s childhood room at her grandparents’ house. But will that help her to drift off? In this unique bedtime book, Mick Jackson’s charming narrative voice meets Baljinder Kaur’s richly detailed illustrations, set in her parents’ homeland, for a story sure to usher young listeners off to dreamland.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Proust-like remembrances meld with a personal travelogue in this transportive bedtime story. As a train chugs through the night, a restless child tucked into a compartment with their Indian- and Sikh-presenting parents tries to summon slumber, recalling "all the different places I have slept." Anecdotal lines provide an account: at home between Mum and Dad, on a beach towel, in the hospital for an operation, and "in the bedroom that used to be my mum's room when she was a girl," among others. Breaking to consider "just me and the train driver, both wide awake," and other sleepless children who might hear the locomotive, the reminiscences, coupled with the rocking cars, prove soporific—and at last add another locale for the child's future recollections. Jackson's first-person narration layers feelings of comfort and warmth across time and space, and Kaur's saturated illustrations employ electric pinks, purples, and teals to render decorative motifs alongside the train and a range of lushly rendered locales. Ages 3–7.
