Hey Blog! This is a first for Home Ed in a Shed – I’m doing a film review!
It’s got a book review to go along with it too. Let’s start with that.
E. Nesbit, author of Five children and It and The Railway Children was one of the great children’s authors of the last century. The latter of these two books is the one I’m focusing on today. It is one of the best stories that I have read. I don’t have a numerical rating for stories, instead I rate them OK, Good, Very Good, etc, until VGBOTHO, or Very Good Book of the Highest Order; I have no one favourite book, just for your information. The Railway Children, however, is also an emotional book, as it’s far more than a story about some children. Like all the best books, it has hope, despair, love, and an evil problem to conquer with good. Bobbie, Peter, and Phyllis have come away from London to Yorkshire after their father vanished suddenly, and have to “play at being poor for a bit”, while there are big issues going on in the family they do not understand. The three discover the amazing local railway, and make friends with the staff at the station, having adventures around it and once saving a train. The canal also features in the story. Then Bobbie discovers from a newspaper that their father has gone to prison, falsely accused, and so begins a hunt to get him back.
The film The Railway Children Return is set more than 30 years later, when Bobbie has grown up and had both children and grandchildren. I feel the timescale is conflicting, as in the book, when Bobbie is 12, it implies that the Tzar is gone, but she is a grandmother by WWII, which does not leave much time. However, a war mentioned ties the date of the book to 1905, so I really don’t know. However, by 1945, when siblings Lilly, Pattie and Ted are evacuated to the country, they arrive to a completely different world. Green fields, sheep; things that seem ordinary are completely new to them. Once again, the railway is the focal point of their adventures, but this time the mission is to save underage black American soldier Abe from his own white officers for racial abuse, none of which the children understand, and none of which is normal in the village; indeed the local pub refuses to accept the idea of discrimination. Does it work out? Well, you’ll have to watch the movie!
Both stories are excellent, and similar themes run through each – a missing father, writing on sheets with paint to alert the trains, help for an innocent, and both heroes and heroines. Who knows what could be next in the collection – The Railway Children Return Returns?!