The Banshee Train

My daughter says that this book "absolutely creeped me out" when she was young. Which is saying something, because she read a lot of scary books as a child. And it still makes my scalp crawl just thinking about it sometimes. The late Ted Rose was one of the country's great railroad artists. I originally bought this book for the illustrations, and I was not disappointed. The story itself is good, even though Odds Bodkin's narrative style seems somewhat pedestrian when written down. But Ted Rose's illustrations are superb, even if he had some trouble rendering people. P.S.: I think the red-bearded fireman in the pictures is supposed to be Bodkin himself.