The Books: Polar Express (Chris van Allsburg)

Next book in my Daily Excerpt:

We’re still in the picture book section . The following book is yet another one of the presents my sister Jean has given me. We in the O’Malley family REVERE good children’s books. This one is The Polar Express, and it’s by the marvelous Chris van Allsburg. I didn’t see the movie because, frankly, the animation freaked me out. Also, I didn’t want to see any of the “additions” made to the book. The book is perfect. Plain and simple.

Here’s a small excerpt, proving yet again that just because a book is for kids doesn’t mean that the author has to dumb down the language, or have a result anything less than literary.

The illustrations in this book are classic Chris Van Allsburg … but the vividness of the language could stand on its own. The ending of this lovely book never fails to give me chills. And I love the image of the city being like a ‘strange ocean liner’.

EXCERPT FROM The Polar Express, by Chris van Allsburg.

We traveled through cold, dark forests, where lean wolves roamed and white-tailed rabbits hid from our train as it thundered through the quiet wilderness.

We climbed mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon. But the Polar Express never slowed down. Faster and faster we ran along, rolling over peaks and through valleys like a car on a roller coaster.

The mountains turned into hills, the hills to snow-covered plains. We crossed a barren desert of ice — the Great Polar Ice Cap. Lights appeared in the distance. They looked like the lights of a strange ocean liner sailing on a frozen sea. “There,” said the conductor, “is the North Pole.”

The North Pole. It was a huge city standing alone at the top of the world, filled with factories where every Christmas toy was made.