Orphan Train - Book Review

Orphan Train - a novel - by Christina Baker Kline,  2 Thumbs way up for this one - and I would add more thumbs if I had them!

This book is historical fiction based on real orphan trains and the people who rode them.  Between 1854 and 1929, trains transported children who were orphaned or abandoned and homeless from East Coast cities to towns in the Midwest for adoption.  More than 200,000 children took these train rides.  They would start in one town, and any children who were not chosen by families there would get back on the train and go to the next town.  Everyone's ultimate hope was that all the children would be chosen at a train stop and would not have to go back to an orphanage in the East.

Before I read this book, I had never heard of Orphan Trains.  Now I know there is a whole network of information about them and the lives of these children.  Likewise, the author Christina Kline explained in the end notes of the book that she had not known about Orphan Trains either, but once she started learning about them, she was driven to write this book.

The book weaves two stories together.  One is the story of a young immigrant girl from Ireland who is put on a train bound ultimately for Minnesota after having lost many of her family members in a fire in their tenament building in New York City in the 1920s.   Story two is about a modern teenager living in Maine who has been shuffled between homes in the Foster Care system.  The two stories are brought together when Molly, the girl from Maine, goes to the home of 91-year-old Vivian to do community service.  We learn that Vivian was the Irish girl on the train.

The book is very well-written, and I found it fascinating.  Also in the end notes, the author mentions many of the references she used for research.  Now I'm anxious to do some research myself.  Just in putting together this blog entry, I did a Google Image search for "orphan train" and found many many photos that are intriguing!  Here is an example of one of many photos of wanted posters that were used as the trains went west.

I know that I need to find a way to use this book at school.  Get one for yourself and let me know what YOU think!

Thanks for reading! See you again soon!

:)Amy