A young girl and her older brother travel from Ontario to the West Coast by train. Along the way they see the prairies and the mountains. They stay a while on the coast with a great aunt, then leave for home. Such is the basic plot of My Brother’s Train, yet the story is much more than this. The girl’s brother tells her at the beginning, “It’s easy to go, but harder to come back,” and the reader soon realizes that this train is far from ordinary, that this journey is more myth and dream than reality. Mysterious details abound: a white horse runs beside the train; the girl sees the gleam of a bear’s eyes in the dark outside; and most amazing of all, a ghostly “trainman” runs behind the train and picks up the girl when she is almost left behind.

The text repeatedly refers to the sleepiness produced by the rhythm of the train, and the language lulls the reader into a dreamlike state where almost anything is believable. The logic is also that of dreams; the platform at the prairie stop is much longer than it seems to the girl narrator, and to return home she and her brother have to run and run to catch the train. The girl’s brother, like the mythical trainman, is a wise protector and guide. The girl narrates the story as a young child would, giving us flashes of memory but not logic, and never analyzing the meaning of the journey.

Paul Zwolak’s luminous and evocative paintings magnify the mythic qualities of the text. He, too, sees the story through the eyes of a young child, presenting a double-page closeup of the bear’s face and giving the trainman gigantic proportions. His use of colour and light, and his Emily Carr trees, all hint at the extraordinary. At the same time the train, its interior, and its passengers all belong in detail and dress to the era of the heyday of train travel in North America and are in this sense realistic. Dream and reality are fused. A perfect union of text and picture, My Brother’s Train will appeal especially to readers drawn to all things magical.