Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
The railway children audio
Fiction
For ages 8 to 11
Unabridged audiobook (Cassette)
Performed/read by: Johanna Ward
Blackstone Audiobooks, 1993 ISBN: 0786104074
Roberta, Peter and Phyllis have a very happy life living with their parents in a little house, playing with trains, and listening to the wonderful stories that their mother tells them. Then, quite suddenly everything changes. The children have to leave their happy little home and worst still their father is taken from them for some unknown reason.
The three children and their mother move to the country. It is terribly boring for the children until they discover that a railway line runs near their new home. Soon they have made friends with some of the people who work on the railway and they even make friends with some of the passengers who ride on the train as well. Days full of adventure soon become commonplace. On one occasion the children help a boy who is injured and on another they help a man who is ill and friendless.
More than anything the children wish that they had their father back and it is Roberta who finds out where he is and why he is there. She begins to hope that perhaps there is something that she can do to get her father back and she tries to think of ways in which she can help.
This remarkable story has stood the test of time so well and the adventure of the three railway children is still as exciting and charming as it was when the book was first published in 1906.
Johanna Ward reads this story beautifully, perfectly capturing the personalities of the characters and the flavour of the setting and times.
