I picked up this book at the book fair. The book claimed that it was #1NY times bestseller. That should have warned me.
But first the history: The orphan trains transported many children from the East Coast to Midwest in the US between 1854 and 1929. It was organized by Children's Aid Society in order provide home (?) to many orphan children. The family that took in the child had to provide education, home and food in return for labor, though a lucky few were adopted. Of course things never worked out as imagined. So many children ended up in bad situations and changing homes many times. In many cases, their names were also changed- thus erasing part of who they were.
Christina Baker Kline uses this as the background for the story she tells in her book "Orphan Train". The book was page turner- I finished in in three hours. It was also cliche-ridden and I could predict exactly what was going to happen as I turned the pages. She uses two characters- Molly, who is for all practical purposes an orphan and is living in a foster home, and Vivian, who was transported in 1929, after she lost her home in a fire, to Minnesota. Molly has to do 50 hours community service as she was caught stealing a book from the library and her boy friend, Jack, gets her work in Vivian's house where she has to clean up the attic. Molly, who has been into many foster homes, has developed a thick shell in order to protect herself, unravels Vivian's story for an English assignment and in the process finds herself warming up to her. The ending was bleah...kind of abrupt, unrealistic...almost as though the author was ticking all the right boxes.
It was a good one time read. I got to learn some history but this is not a book that I would re-read.
But first the history: The orphan trains transported many children from the East Coast to Midwest in the US between 1854 and 1929. It was organized by Children's Aid Society in order provide home (?) to many orphan children. The family that took in the child had to provide education, home and food in return for labor, though a lucky few were adopted. Of course things never worked out as imagined. So many children ended up in bad situations and changing homes many times. In many cases, their names were also changed- thus erasing part of who they were.
Christina Baker Kline uses this as the background for the story she tells in her book "Orphan Train". The book was page turner- I finished in in three hours. It was also cliche-ridden and I could predict exactly what was going to happen as I turned the pages. She uses two characters- Molly, who is for all practical purposes an orphan and is living in a foster home, and Vivian, who was transported in 1929, after she lost her home in a fire, to Minnesota. Molly has to do 50 hours community service as she was caught stealing a book from the library and her boy friend, Jack, gets her work in Vivian's house where she has to clean up the attic. Molly, who has been into many foster homes, has developed a thick shell in order to protect herself, unravels Vivian's story for an English assignment and in the process finds herself warming up to her. The ending was bleah...kind of abrupt, unrealistic...almost as though the author was ticking all the right boxes.
It was a good one time read. I got to learn some history but this is not a book that I would re-read.
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