The Railway Children
By Edith Nesbit
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About this ebook
Edith Nesbit
Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was an English writer of children’s literature. Born in Kennington, Nesbit was raised by her mother following the death of her father—a prominent chemist—when she was only four years old. Due to her sister Mary’s struggle with tuberculosis, the family travelled throughout England, France, Spain, and Germany for years. After Mary passed, Edith and her mother returned to England for good, eventually settling in London where, at eighteen, Edith met her future husband, a bank clerk named Hubert Bland. The two—who became prominent socialists and were founding members of the Fabian Society—had a famously difficult marriage, and both had numerous affairs. Nesbit began her career as a poet, eventually turning to children’s literature and publishing around forty novels, story collections, and picture books. A contemporary of such figures of Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame, Nesbit was notable as a writer who pioneered the children’s adventure story in fiction. Among her most popular works are The Railway Children (1906) and The Story of the Amulet (1906), the former of which was adapted into a 1970 film, and the latter of which served as a profound influence on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. A friend and mentor to George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, Nesbit’s work has inspired and entertained generations of children and adults, including such authors as J.K. Rowling, Noël Coward, and P.L. Travers.
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Reviews for The Railway Children
670 ratings39 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This classic children's novel from 1905 is a delight to read, and gently humourous in many places as our heroes, Peter, Phyllis (Phil for short) and Roberta (Bobbie for short) get up to all kinds of adventures in and around the railway, preventing train crashes, putting out fires, rescuing people from dark and dank tunnels and, slightly incongruously, meeting a Russian dissident. There are some nice illustrations in this edition also. I've never seen any of the TV and film adaptations of this, but I intend to seek them out.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A book I've been meaning to read for a very long time. These days the language of the book is a little dated but I can see how, in 1906 when it was first published, it would have become very popular with the targeted audience. A lovely tale of three children learning to deal with what life throws at them, at times overly sentimental but that could just be me, reading a children's book in 2016, that is over 100 years old.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was all about the life of three children: Phyllis, Peter and Roberta (though she likes to be called Bobbie instead). The children's father mysteriously goes away, and none of them know why except Mother. They move house into the countryside and begin to live very poor. There the children make good friends with the people of the railway, and love the railway itself.
Their father goes for a very long time. When the children wave to an old friend of theirs, which they call 'The Old Gentleman', they are doing it for the purpose of him to send their love to Father.
With many rescues and great journeys, the children have great fun and a brilliant time. But they are also sad - they miss Father so much, and yet they don't think Mother is happy. "How can we cheer her up?" they ask each other. "If she's not happy, she never will be until Father comes back, will she?" and the simple questions are: WILL Father come back? And if not, WILL the children or Mother be happy again?
Wonderful book! Terrific! I like the phrases Nesbit uses - "don't let's quarrel, now!" - "Oh, rot!" - "Yes, Mother. Of course we will, ducky-dear." - it's all very funny, since we usually don't speak like that anymore, but it also gives a touch of what Nesbit DID speak like when she was still around. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I very much liked this story of three children who must move with their mother from the comfort of their well-to-do London home to a small cottage in the country and "play at being poor" while their father is mysteriously away. A bit saccharine, maybe, but a well-written and comfy read nonetheless, with nicely-drawn and sometimes hilarious characters.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5What happened to my review? I remember mostly being disappointed, as much of Nesbit I loved. Iirc, this had too much slang, and was too implausible, for me.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love this book. I love trains just as much as books. I enjoyed the charthers in the book. It about a family that has to make adjustment on the fly. I quite enjoyable. I love how this is a Classic. I did not know this book was out there to read while I was growing up. The Children name are Bobby, Phil and Paul.
If you want to know mare about it what happens I would suggest picking it up. Something happens that causes their father to go away. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I know I loved this enough as a kid to read it at least ten times, but then I was a big re-reader when I was younger. I have always loved the film too but the book is better.Must re-read this some day.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Apparently this is a beloved classic. I would describe it as treacly.Sentimental. Much more about the childrens' emotions than about trains.Endless scenes of the children being responsible and noble and brave.Very much of its time and place, with children saying things like "Bother! I believe I've broken my leg."Morally didactic to the point of being patronising.Might be good for children who are very interested in emotions.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5it is a great book for all ages.a loveing story about three cildren.how has tots of fun to geather
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Read this gem years ago. One of the best children's books ever by one of my favorite children's book authors.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I love reading children's books, particularly classics like this. The story is well-known: three children live an idyllic life with their cheerful father and loving mother in the early part of the 20th century. One day some men arrive unexpectedly and their father goes away with them. Their mother is very upset, and before long they move to a smaller house near a railway station.
The book mostly follows the lives of the children, who no longer go to school so are free to roam around the countryside getting to know people and learning a great deal about the railway. Which doesn't sound terribly exciting, but it's a great book - there are some very moving moments, and it's also very well-written with a bit of humour in the author's asides. Despite being written nearly 100 years ago the language doesn't seem too old-fashioned, and would probably be enjoyed by children from about the age of seven or eight upwards reading alone, or younger with a parent reading aloud. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A remarkably good book. It is obviously didactic and the writer speaks directly to the reader, making it seem even more so. At the same time, it is full of humour, much of it derived from the children's interactions, imagination, and conversation. It is utterly improbable; people are never that helpful to chance-met children. The children also are remarkably resourceful in situations where suffering is both visible and real or where disaster is immanent. There are really excellent descriptions of what it is like to ride on a train and what it is like to watch one go by or arrive at the station and generally vivid descriptions throughout.It was reminiscent of "No Boats on Bannermere", including the part where the family arrives at an apparently neglected and inhospitable destination in the late evening only to find, the following day, how much has been done for them.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is one of Nesbit's most popular stories, but not one of my favorites --I prefer her fantasies. This is a relatively realistic book about a family of a mother and 3 children who go to live in a little cottage near a railway station after the father of the family is imprisoned for an obscure crime. The children make friends with the railway staff and with an old gentleman ( railway commuter) who turns out to have enough influence to get their father's case investigated, and he is found innocent. One interesting point is that the mother shares many characteristics with Helen, Philip's sister in The Magic City (my favorite Nesbit) --they are both delightful people with an understanding of children and a gift for storytelling (the mother in this story supports herself by writing children's stories after her husband is imprisoned.) The cover of this version is based on a film version by EMI.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A wonderful children's book, written more than 100 years ago. It is the story of 3 siblings Roberta (Bobbi), Peter & Phyllis who must move to a small cottage in a little town when their father is mysteriously taken away. They meet many of the town's folk; including Perks the railway Porter and the Old Gentleman, a rider on the train. While their mother writes stories to support them, they go off and have many wonderful adventures. What I especially enjoyed about this book is how real these children were; they argue, fight, make up and behave like "regular" siblings. I would recommend this book for children 8 to 12 years old or for families to enjoy together.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this story. One day the father of 3 children left from their house. From that day they're said to be poor by mother. But they didn't know why they should do so. And they face many difficulties, but they also meet good person and thigs. And does their father come or not..?I enjoyed this story. I felt love of family from this story. Family is very important. And the 3 children have so warm heart. I should learn from them!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Roberta, Peter and Phillis have the perfect life, wonderful parents and all the riches a child could ask for. Then one day, their father gets taken away by two men and put into prison. The children and their mother are forced to move to a small cottage in the country. While their mother writes stories to try and support them, the three children go on many adventures.I felt love of family,and how inportant family is.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Family oriented books are a great way to get kids to open up and talk about their own experiences. In this book there were two sisters and one brother.It tells the tale of woes taht some poverty stircken families face and how this particualr family worked together and overcame their hardships together. This story may be an old story but It really has rellevant issues taht can be discussed in a classroom setting. This is one of those intrigueing stories because when read aloud the kids can visualize exactly what is going on. We could also incorporate this book in a problem solving lesson. ie.. We could talk about the issues that family faced and what other options they could have tried that may or may not have turned out differently.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Something about this book always gets to me. This time it was the effort of the eldest to be good when she couldn't be always, as she struggles to help her mother through her father's mysterious disappearance. I wish I knew if any young people read Nesbit any more, or if this would be a good read aloud for fifth graders.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Re-read this lovely classic after a long time. Written in a charming manner about a bygone era from Children's POV. It was a pleasure to read in Puffin Classic paperback.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5There were moments that made me grin inanely, but in general this was just a nice read. I love The Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet, but this doesn't quite reach the same heights. Still, it was a nice, restful, enjoyable read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ah, nostalgia. I've been meaning to reread this for a while, and it's probably a pity I didn't do it in time for my children's literature exam. Still, there it is. I felt like the English Lit student was ticking boxes in my head as I went through: morality lessons, check, didactic narrator, check, discussion of the different roles for men and women, check, happy domestic life, check...
Still, it's also fun to disregard that and read about the three kids getting into trouble and helping their mother, etc, etc. I used to like Roberta/Bobbie the best, but she's really quite goody-goody most of the time.
It's funny reading it now and seeing the narrator talking down to me/the child reader. I can't think how I didn't find that annoying when I was younger, because I generally didn't like being told what to do by books, but I took both this and some of the lessons in Little Women (which in a way is very like this only for older girls) completely to heart. I don't think that was a terribly bad thing.
I love the ending. It's so unlikely, everything going right and all the people and friends they've made feeding into a happy ending, but still, everyone's a sucker for a happy ending sometimes. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Originally published serially in The London Magazine, E. Nesbit's childhood classic The Railway Children was first released as a book in 1906, and follows the story of three siblings - Bobbie (Roberta), Peter and Phyllis - who find their lives mysteriously transformed when their father is taken away one night, and they must move to the country with their mother. Here, at Three Chimneys house, the children befriend the locals, observe the railway - which becomes a central facet of their lives - and attempt to resolve the issue of their father's disappearance. When the three learn that he has been accused of espionage, they are determined to prove his innocence, a project in which they are aided by the Old Gentleman, a regular railroad passenger whom they have befriended...A book I have read many times, mostly recently for a course in children's literature, The Railway Children is an engaging story of three young people and their many adventures. It reflects the late-Victorian fascination with trains and the railroad - which are here the means of freeing an innocent man, and reuniting a family - as well as its creator's social views and interests. It's tempting to see a little of Nesbit in the children's mother, who bravely picks up her pen to earn a living for the family, when her husband is taken away, or to see the emphasis put on helping others in the right way - the importance of giving aid that is not perceived as charity, for instance, to avoid wounding the pride and self-respect of others - as a reflection of the author's views as a Fabian. However interesting any such references may be, this is also a book that has appeal as a story, one in which a happy family is torn apart, before eventually being reunited. The children's adventures in between make for entertaining reading!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A beautifully written book, though definitely from another time. Three siblings and their mother leave their London home for the countryside because some men come to take their father away. What follows are a series of mini-adventures, mostly concerning the Railway and surrounding areas where the children express themselves through kindness and good deeds.
The reason I enjoyed this book so much was, not just for the wonderful old-fashioned language you find in books such as these (calling someone a brick always amuses me), but because it holds a very important message and that is you are not worth how much money you have. The children move from, not an unseemly amount of wealth, but definitely enough to afford a privileged lifestyle to barely being able to afford warming their house, resorting in the children "borrowing" coal in lieu of a game.
The whole point of life is to better yourself and it's quite difficult to do that when you're born in to money. But the children better themselves despite this, and in so many different ways it's hard to look back on this time and envy them for being able to live in it. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I listened to a BBC dramtization (or similar) which is far better than the film. I doubt the film could hold the attention of modern kids.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It's uncanny how many adventures Phyllis, Peter, and Bobbie get into in such a short period of time. The beginning of the 20th century was certainly an exciting time, at least in rural England. And oh! to fall on hard times in the way that they did. However did they manage with just the one servant?
My kids liked this book, but I've discovered that my kids aren't terribly discerning readers at this point, so you should take their recommendation with a grain of salt. I liked the language, and I liked how the children interacted with adults and were so intent upon thinking of nice things to do even if they didn't do so well at them sometimes. The ending made me cry, but I've been crying at practically every book lately. It's like I just feel so grateful to the story for drawing me in that my emotions get the better of me.
Oh, and the strange scene at the end about the "scientific" explanation for why boys and men need to act and speak gently towards girls and women---my kids had a very fun time yelling out reasons this explanation isn't actually scientific. I was afraid I would have to prompt them to question what was written, but they took it and ran all on their own.
"Other animals don't avoid mother animals because the mothers are more delicate; they avoid them because they're fierce! A mother bear with cubs is much more dangerous than any other bear!" And so on.
I had fun listening to them get so worked up.
I've been seeing more things lately online and elsewhere about how we need to teach boys to never hit girls, and although I've been tempted to use that line on my own son to try and get him to stop injuring his sister, I worry that this rule implies that it's okay to hit boys, which would mean it's okay for my daughter to hit her brother, and that just doesn't work for me (or for my son). So I opted for an "it's not okay to hurt anyone or for them to hurt you" line, and then Edith Nesbit delivered the question about whether to treat boys and girls differently right to the book we were reading. How convenient!
Decent book and fun, although probably not in the way the author intended, but I prefer Nesbit's dragon stories. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There is something perfectly lovely about all E. Nesbit's books, and they certainly formed the backdrop to many a day when I was a little girl. Reading this particular book as an adult fills me with not only with pleasure but with a deeper understanding. I could not help but wonder if this story, of a father wrongly accused and imprisoned, was not inspired by the Dreyfus affair, which was certainly preoccupying many people's minds at the time. One of the delights of Nesbit's writing is that she never condescends to her young readers. Complicated questions of justice, of charity, of the freedoms denied others -- there is quite a wonderful sequence involving a Russian political fugitive -- of absent parents and what it means to perform a heroic act. The children learn things indirectly, peeking into the world of adults from around the corners of childhood. It's very well done.One of the things that I noticed most this time around, though, was the amount of freedom children had. Can you imagine children left to play unsupervised in the woods, around a train station, by the train tunnels and tracks themselves? I will be showing my age here, but I recall many days spent wandering by myself in the fields and forests near my childhood home, expected to return only when I got hungry or the streetlights came on. Did I get into some mischief? Yes. Was it a bit dangerous? Yes. And was being left to create a world by myself, and sometimes with other children, good for my imagination, for my sense of independence, for developing a way of being in the world? Undeniably. I wonder, in fact, if I would have become a writer if I hadn't had those days, if I was driven from one place to another, one class to another, one computer to another.Well, that's an essay for another place. Here, I'll simply say it was lovely to visit a world, so beautifully crafted, which probably now exists no where except between the pages of a book. Recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A delightful and multi-layered children's adventure, focused on three London children who suddenly have to move to the countryside as their father mysteriously goes away. The pathos of the story lies in the cotrast between the children's enthusiams for theit new surroundings and the slow realization of
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a classic! A great read for children and adults, and quite realistic railway action to boot.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5- Audiobook - This book was horrifying! It's a heartwarming story about three children who don't mind that they suddenly become poor, and who are brave and inventive and save people's lives. But children shouldn't have to save people's lives! They save, among others, a baby who is left alone in a BURNING houseboat, an ENTIRE TRAIN full of people whose track is blocked, a boy who gets lost in a train tunnel and breaks his leg, and a Russian man who has been in a Siberian prison camp for years and now needs to find his family. And if the children hadn't done the right thing, PEOPLE WOULD HAVE DIED! And the whole time their father has "mysteriously disappeared" and they had to move out of their big house into a tiny one and their mother works all the time (writing stories) so that they'll just barely have enough money for food.The book was fine but I didn't find it at all lighthearted, and I wouldn't recommend it to kids.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A big part of me goes, "Oh boy! A bunch of rich kids meddle in everyone's affairs and of course fix everything with the power of their pluck and sheer Britishness! Great!" but I can't deny that these kids are pretty damn likable and that Nesbit has a real way with writing from a child's perspective.