Julie Lawson, author of 18 books and granddaughter of a Canadian Pacific Railway man, has always been enthralled by trains. She wrote about the 1927 derailment of a silk train in Emma and the Silk Train and now she's produced Bear on the Train (Kids Can $15.95). It's based on a story related to her by her husband about a bear he'd seen in northern BC. The protagonist Jeffrey, modeled on the illustrator Brian Deines' own son, is the lone witness to a large black bear feeding in the grain hopper of a mile-long freight train. The bear, stomach full, settles in for a long winter's nap and, for months, unknowingly travels back and forth between the coastal mountains and the prairies. Then spring arrives, and no one sees the bear rouse himself and amble for home. Except Jeffrey. 1-55074-560-3

[Louise Donnelly / BCBW 2000]