  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 09/01/2011 Gr 1–3—This story of "Jessie," a subway car built in the early 1960s, was inspired by the author's trip to the New York Transit Museum and is a lovely tribute to the city and its boroughs. Told in a clever biographical format, the story begins with Jessie's "birth" details: weight, length, etc. The shiny, new car takes her responsibilities seriously as she safely carries children to school, adults to work, and friends and family members to visit one another. As the decades pass, Jessie delivers visitors to the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, is covered in graffiti, then painted red, repaired, and refurbished, including air-conditioning to replace outdated fans. Eventually, she is retired and becomes part of an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean, where she assumes her new job. The expressive acrylic illustrations set the tone and give the story depth. The features on the front of the subway car are used to make Jessie's eyes, nose, and mouth. An author's note gives details about the history of subway cars around the world. This title will be appreciated by train buffs and those curious about the history of New York City.—Anne Beier, Clifton Public Library, NJ - Copyright 2011 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Bulletin for the Center... - 12/01/2011 “When Jessie was born in St. Louis, Missouri, she weighed 75,122 pounds and was 51 1/2 feet long.” About average, one would suspect, for a subway car. In her heyday, she shuttled visitors to the New York World’s Fair, transported commuters to their destinations, and mightily enjoyed the curves and drops that guided her along the tracks and under the river. Repairs and paint jobs kept her going for over two decades, but time took its toll, and she was successively put out to pasture in a train yard, stripped of her parts, hauled away on a barge, and dumped off the Atlantic coast, where sea life transformed her, “and now a whole city lives inside her.” The anthropomorphized car, with its cheery eyes and grinning grill, is designed to win the hearts of a quite young audience as it whooshes through hazily softened swaths of NYC. It may come as something of a shock, therefore, when the peppy tale of a helpful rail car takes an abruptly darker turn. An endnote offers some explanation about Jessie’s fate: “After they were taken out of service, many of the Redbirds [subway cars] were reused as artificial reefs in the Atlantic” and speaks of the reefs’ role in providing “new fishing grounds for both people and fish.” Hopefully an ecologically minded adult will talk up Jessie’s ongoing contribution to the maritime community; otherwise kids who rely on the text alone will probably conclude humanity done her wrong. EB - Copyright 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Loading...
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