The Railway Children

What Hacker News says

1. nickd2001May 2024
   I'd think Tolkein's "The Hobbit" would fit this description? Or CS Lewis Narnia series, one-offs like "The Secret Garden", Also Edith Nesbit, fantastic children's author, "The Railway children" probably her most famous. century old at least.
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2. hcrispNov 2021
   Another excellent narrator with a British accent is Karen Savage. She has read many complete works by Jane Austen and E. Nesbit, among other titles, and is as good as any professional voice actor:

     - 'Pride and Prejudice' (Austen)
     - 'Sense and Sensibility' (Austen)
     - 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers' (Nesbit)
     - 'The Railway Children' (Nesbit)
     - many others (says 141 total matches)
   

   http://www.karenrsavage.com/blog/
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3. jrussinoJan 2025
   Indeed, the author of this very article agrees:

   >In children’s books, including my own, there are many orphans – largely because adults get in the way of adventure

   >I would never wish to do without the power of the orphan story, however. It has a burning warmth and clarity to it. It matters to us all, because we all become orphans in the end. The orphan story has traditionally offered a way for both children and adults to imagine their fundamental aloneness. Francis Spufford writes that, among the Hopi people of the American South-West, it is impossible to be an orphan. No child could slip through the net of family bond: if parents die, a grandparent, aunt, third cousin, someone will step in to fulfil that role. But many Hopi stories centre on an orphan abandoned in the harsh wilderness: abandonment must be imagined for certain elements of human experience – our ultimate solitude and our interconnectedness – to be understood.

   >The orphan story points to another possible version of heroism offered by children’s books: it opens the space for surrogacy. Think of E. Nesbit’s 1905 novel The Railway Children. The three siblings aren’t orphans, but the removal of their father and the absence of their working mother allows for other figures – Mr Perks the railway porter, the Old Gentleman on the train – to take on the role of protector and fairy godmother. To read The Railway Children is to be told: despite the spinning and chaos of the world, there will be adults who will fight for you.

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4. anjbeOct 2022
   The article mentions that two of her books (The House of Arden and The Railway Children) are being republished this fall. That said, her copyrights have expired, so they’re also available now as open‐source, public domain ebooks at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-nesbit

   I was a big fan of Nesbit’s Psammead trilogy as a child: Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet.

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