"The Railway Children" by E. Nesbit

I loved this book when I was a kid.  Guess what?  I still love it now!  I read it out loud to my three kiddos this month, and they just ate it up.  I read them the Usborne Illustrated Original edition pictured here, and the illustrations by Ji-Hyuk Kim are GORGEOUS.  Especially everything involving the trains.

Three children and their mother have to leave their London home to go live in a small cottage in the English countryside because their father... has had some trouble befall him.  Trouble you don't learn about for a long, long time because the children don't know what it is either.

They live not far from a railway and make friends with the people who work at the local station as well as some of the engineers and passengers.  And they have many adventures involving the train and its environs, including one thrilling day when they actually save a train from being wrecked.  It's an utterly charming book, and I'm not surprised that my kids loved it too.

(From my Instagram account)

Particularly Good Bits:

Grown-up people, even Mothers, often make remarks that don't seem to mean anything in particular, just for the sake of saying something, seemingly (p. 52).

There was a pleasant party of barge people around the fire.  You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk.  This is the real secret of pleasant society (p. 215).

However nice the person who is teaching you may be, lessons are lessons all the world over, and at their best are worse fun than peeling potatoes or lighting a fire (p. 351-2).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G, for it is good, clean, sweet, lovely, and wholesome.

This is my 46th book read and reviewed for my second go-'round with the Classics Club.  Almost to my goal of 50!