On the Blue Comet

By Rosemary Wells

Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

Candlewick, 2010

$16.99, ages 10 and up, 336 pages

Trouble comes to everyone, Oscar's dad suggests just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Like the whistle of a train or the voice of wolf, you can't help but hear it coming.

But suppose 11-year-old Oscar could go back and stop trouble before it ever happened?

In this wondrous book by award-winning Wells, Oscar loses everything he holds dear, but discovers just in time that if he longs for things hard enough, he might find a way to get them back.

Blending the magic of Lionel trains with theories of time travel, Wells tells the remarkable journey of a boy who gets separated from his father and nearly loses his life before finding his own happy ending on a model train.

Bagram Ibatoulline's paintings envelop you like a Norman Rockwell print and even though Oscar's world is filled with unpleasantness, glimpses of hope always come through in the pictures. 

Two years into the stock market disaster, the bottom falls out of Oscar's peaceful life in Cairo, Illinois. Not since his mother died in a fireworks plant explosion when he was 3 years old has Oscar felt his insides burn with so much fear and anger.

In one summer, his dad loses his job selling tractors, the bank repossesses their house and and bank president Mr. Pettishanks buys out their cherished Lionel trains, including Oscar's 11th birthday gift, the queen of all trains, the Blue Comet.

My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood

By Rosemary Wells
With Secundino Fernandez

Illustrated by Peter Ferguson

Candlewick Press, 2010

$17.99, ages 9-12, 72 pages

A Cuban boy aches to return to the Havana he once knew, but comes to realize that even though he can't go back, he can still keep his beloved city with him by sculpting his memories of it out of cardboard.

In this captivating true story by award-winning Wells, 10-year-old Secundino "Dino" Fernandez creates a miniature version of Havana on the floor of his New York City bedroom to ease his sadness at having to flee Cuba after dictator Fidel Castro comes to power.

Wells (Max and Ruby) was inspired to tell Dino's story after hearing him recount in a 2001 radio interview the intense homesickness he suffered 50 years ago when he emigrated to the United States with his parents, and the grit he showed by taking control of his situation.

Born with a passion for sketching buildings, "Dino" was so mesmerized as a young boy by the architectural splendor of Havana that he sketched every facade he passed, and with the help of his cousin, cut out the sketches and strung them with tape into a circle on the floor.

Together they'd sit inside the paper city and marvel at the beauty of the stone archways and the entrance to El Palace, the president's house, with its marble column.

"Until I am six years old, in 1954, my world is sweet," Wells writes on behalf of Fernandez, now an architect in New York City. "'We live in a city built by angels,' Papa says."