The Train to Impossible Places

P. G. Bell's The Train to Impossible Places is a magical adventure for 9 year olds that starts with a steam train coming through the front hall.

What happens

Suzy Smith is eleven and mad about physics. Not maths, she'll tell you. Maths only ever gives you more numbers, and what are you supposed to do with those?

So when she creeps downstairs at two in the morning and finds railway lines cut into the hall carpet, she does what Suzy does. She asks questions. Lots of them.

The tracks belong to the Impossible Postal Express, a troll train taking an unofficial shortcut through her house because it's running late. Her parents are asleep on the sofa under a spell, and nobody meant her to be awake at all.

What I love is that she never once stops arguing. The engineer explains that the hall is now bigger on the inside and it's all simple fuzzics, like physics only fuzzier. Suzy is outraged. Physics doesn't let you break the rules!

The trolls are wonderful. Stonker the driver has a moustache that hangs almost to his knees. Ursel keeps the firebox stoked and is a brown bear who happens to prefer being blonde (do not ask her about it). And Wilmot, the postmaster, is drowning in a uniform several sizes too big, because it was his father's, and his father's before that.

Wilmot is the heart of it. He's doing the work of a hundred trolls on his own, and he's terrified of the customer at the end of the line, a sorceress with a fondness for turning people to stone.

Which is where the one small heads-up sits. The desert outside the carriage window turns out to be full of statues of people with their arms stretched out. It's eerie rather than gory, and it's there for atmosphere, but a reader who worries will notice it.

If your child likes a fantasy world explained properly, with rules and departments and budget cuts, this is very much their sort of nonsense. The five corners of reality have border controls.

What to read next

If the Express goes down well, The Great Brain Robbery sends Suzy out on another delivery while the ground under Trollville refuses to keep still. You'll find that one in the library as well.