The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit

An ebook, free from Amazon for my Kindle app. An old book, now in public domain. A sweet, old-fashioned children's book. It features three upper middle class British children, Roberta ("Bobbie"), Peter, and Phyllis ("Phil"), who live comfortably in a London suburb with their mother, father, a cook, and one or two maids. Life is good until one evening when Father is suddenly called away. He does not return, and some time later the children and their mother move to a small house in the country, with no servants. They no longer go to school, and their mother no longer has the time to play with them, nor tell them stories or make up sweet and silly poems for them. At first she tells them they must play at being poor, and as time goes on, she tells them they are poor. They all miss their father, but no one mentions him and the children are in the dark as to why he disappeared. They entertain themselves by waving at the trains as they pass by near their home, and visiting the kind porter at the railway station. One adventure leads to another; they save lives; they prevent a train wreck; they rescue a boy who has broken his leg in the tunnel. They are polite and respectful and kind to everyone they meet, and everyone is charmed by them. As one might expect from a children's book, it ends happily; Father is reunited with his family, but they have grown stronger, braver, and wiser in his absence.
***************
This is a better, more thorough and more thoughtful review of the same book by my friend at Reading to Know:
The Railway Children

As Good As Gone, by Larry Watson

(my photo)

This is an Early Reviewers book, which I received from Algonquin Books, asking nothing but an honest review.

I enjoyed the storyline and the characters, got really involved in it, and kept reading to see what would happen. I did not much care for the strong language and sexuality, but the language was in keeping with the nature of the characters.

A tough, rangy old cowboy, now living almost as a hermit, is asked by his son to come stay with his grandchildren, who are strangers to him, for a few days while the son takes his wife to another city for surgery. The town, which as a former real estate agent, he helped build has also become strange to him, but the widow next door remembers him well.
His son and daughter-in-law have left some situations unresolved, and as attention is needed to sort them out, "Grandpa" delves in with knife and pistol and fists and tries to settle them the old-fashioned cowboy way.

The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, A Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History

This is a book that I requested and received from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I requested it, thinking it was simply a biography of a U.S. president I had admired, but knew little about. I found his life story interesting, his poor health as a young child and his hard work to make himself fit and well, and his early fascination with the study of animals. I admire him for his work to promote conservation of natural resources and of wildlife, but the unending accounts of killing grizzlies, bison, elephants, hippos and rhinos were distressing to me. I note one quote from the book in particular, a narrative on hunting hippos: "As Roosevelt later pointed out, the cow's (female hippo) object may have been as benign as an escape to deeper water, but its wide-open jaws seemed to indicate that it was 'bent on mischief.' " Seemed like Roosevelt was the one bent on mischief; the hippos were minding their own business. I confess, I am one of the "mushy sentimentalists" like those deplored by Mr. Roosevelt. That said, his legacy cannot be denied, that of natural history and of conservation.

Since writing this review, last night (June 7) I enjoyed watching a Nova episode on PBS (American public television) titled "Wild Ways". It was about modern methods of studying and conserving wildlife: tracking animals with GPS enabled collars, and trying to open up corridors for migration. Very interesting and encouraging!