Locomotive steam whistles echo no more in the forests of the north California coast. A century ago, Humboldt and Mendocino Counties had more than 40 railroads bringing logs out of the forest to mills at the water's edge. Only one single railroad ever connected to the outside world, and it too is gone. One railroad survives as the Skunk Train in Mendocino County, and it carries tourists today instead of lumber. Redwood and tan oak bark were the two products moved by rail, and very little else was hauled other than lumberjacks and an occasional picnic excursion for loggers' families. Economic depressions and the advent of trucking saw railroads vanish like a puff of steam from the landscape.
All aboard! The sun is down...the Goodnight Train is leaving town! Join the many parents and caregivers who enjoy reading The Goodnight Train again and again and have responded with thousands of 5-star reviews. This is a fun and effective bedtime book that both adults and kids love. Roll that corner, rock that curve, and soar past mermaids, leaping sheep, and even ice-cream clouds... With soothing, lyrical words and magical illustrations, this picture book presents a nighttime fantasy that's guaranteed to make even the most resistant sleeper snuggle up tight. Plus don't miss the companion books: Goodnight Train Rolls On and Santa and the Goodnight Train!
Starting in the Humboldt wilds and ending on the Skid Row of Los Angeles, Skunk Train follows two teenagers, Kyle and Lizzie, who stumble upon stolen drug money and set off to find Kyle’s father, a Hollywood director he’s never met, with drug dealers, dirty cops, and the Mexican mob on their heels. Kyle Gill, fifteen, lives with his older cousin, Deke, in the backwater Northern California town of Dormundt. Kyle has been cutting class for the past three weeks. When Kyle returns home one afternoon, he discovers Deke and his business partner, Jimmy, are holding one hundred pounds of marijuana, which they discovered abandoned at their dealer’s house. Knowing people will soon come looking for the dope, Deke and Jimmy set up a quick deal at the Skunk Train Inn, a skeezy roadside motel, but the buyers turn out to be dirty cops. In the ensuing melee, Deke is killed, Jimmy escapes, and the dirty cops flee. Kyle takes off in Jimmy’s truck with the money that was transferred before the shootout. On a mission to find his father, Kyle heads to San Francisco, where he meets Lizzie Decker, a wealthy high school senior, whose father has just been arrested for embezzlement. Together, Kyle and Lizzie join forces, but are soon pursued by Jimmy, the two dirty cops, and the Mexican cartel, as a third detective closes in, attempting to tie loose threads and solve the Skunk Train murders. Drawing on novels featuring teenage protagonists such as Rule of the Bone and Catcher in the Rye, Skunk Train is a modern-day love story set against the backdrop of the NorCal marijuana trade. Like No Country for Old Men, the book is steeped in the colloquial. It is a fast-paced thriller, which tests the bonds of family and shows the lengths desperate people will go to keep a secret and protect the ones they love. Praise for SKUNK TRAIN: “In Skunk Train, Clifford channels the best of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, and Richard Lange’s This Wicked World. Here a teenager on a mission endures and enacts all manner of crime. The road to becoming a man is not just rocky for Kyle, it is filled with figurative craters, sinkholes, and mountains. Buckle up and hold on tight. It’s a fast and rough road trip you won’t want to miss.” —Jeffery Hess, author of No Salvation “Three are dead at the Skunk Train Inn and 15-year-old Kyle Gill is on the run with a bag of cash—hunted by a small-time dealer, crooked cops, and a Mexican cartel. A heart-pounding thriller which could be dubbed ‘no country for young men’.” —J.L. Abramo, Shamus Award-winning author of Gravesend “Joe Clifford’s Skunk Train is fifteen year-old ‘loser’ Kyle Gill’s tough, adrenaline-fueled coming of age story that collides with northern California’s marijuana culture, San Francisco’s highest and lowest elements and the fringes of Hollywood. Gritty, raw and rough-edged, but with perceptive observations about life and a tender heart at its center. It’s so good every time I had to stop reading I couldn’t wait to get back to it to find out what was happening to Kyle and his girlfriend Lizzie. Tense, terse and fast paced—a must read.” —Paul D. Marks, Shamus Award-winning author of White Heat
Come along for the ride as a busy toy locomotive makes its rounds through a bustling playroom. Featuring rhyming couplets and bright, bold illustrations, this story is sure to be a hit with young train lovers.
The Ninja Librarian, Book TwoWhen Big Al wakes up one morning and finds the Ninja Librarian has left town, everything seems to go wrong. And just about the time she's thinking maybe the town can cope after all, he comes back. After that, it's business as usual in Skunk Corners: bad guys, irritated skunks, and crises big and small that require the Librarian's unique brand of outside-the-box thinking and direct action.
An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern world In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner—coauthor of the New York Times–bestselling An Ordinary Man—travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world—and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.
In simple, powerful words and vibrant illustrations, Donald Crews evokes the rolling wheels of that childhood favorite: a train. This Caldecott Honor Book features bright colors and bold shapes. Even a child not lucky enough to have counted freight cars will feel he or she has watched a freight train passing after reading Freight Train. Donald Crews used childhood memories of trains seen during his travels to his grandparents' farm in the American South as the inspiration for this timeless favorite. New York magazine's The Strategist chose Freight Train as one of the "Best (Nonobvious) Baby Books to Bring to a Shower." As The Strategist stated: "The Caldecott Honor Book is spare and minimal in both art and text and follows the journey of a freight train and all its cars until it rolls off the page and into the distance. It’s a good way to learn all the different names of train cars, too." Red caboose at the back, orange tank car, green cattle car, purple box car, black tender and a black steam engine . . . freight train.
Mr. Prickles was not a particularly friendly fellow. He was tough to get close to . . . because he was a porcupine. "You're not cute like us," said Raccoon. "Or cuddly like us," said Chipmunk. "Or playful like us," said Skunk. "I am," said Mr. Prickles. "On the inside." Poor Mr. Prickles was very lonely-until the day he met Miss Pointypants. Could she be the perfect prickly companion for moonlit strolls and midnight feasts? Was love in the air for even the sharpest of sorts?
