The Night Train

by Allan Ahlberg

'They want a sack of gold for the driver and half your kingdom for the night.'

Meet the king who must rescue night, the children who create a mighty slide and the mad professor's daughter in this wonderful collection of stories in prose and verse from Allan Ahlberg.

Contains:
Life Savings
The Mad Professor's Daughter (Poem)
The Night Train
No Man's Land
Captain Jim (Poem)
The Clothes Horse
The Mighty Slide (Poem)
God Knows

Genres: Childrens

55 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1996

About the author

Allan Ahlberg was one of the UK's most acclaimed and successful authors of children's books - including the best-selling Jolly Postman series. Born in Croydon in 1938, he was educated at Sunderland Technical College. Although he dreamed of becoming a writer since the age of twelve, his route to that goal was somewhat circuitous. Other jobs along the way included postman (not an especially jolly one, he recalls), gravedigger, plumber, and teacher.

Ahlberg wrote his first book when he was thirty-seven, after a decade of teaching - a profession that he maintains is "much harder" than being a writer. He says that if he hadn't become a writer, he would have loved to be a soccer player. He was married for many years to fellow children's author Janet Ahlberg, with whom he often worked. Their daughter, Jessica Ahlberg, is also a children's author.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top shelf little charming book. I’ve been aware of Allan Ahlberg as a picture book author for a long time, I’ve shelved his several pictures books that were published in the US, but he doesn’t have the rep and the nostalgia here. The Night Train is a tiny collection of maybe slightly longer works for slightly older kids. No pictures, but his wife did the cover art. There’s a real selection here. The Mad Professor’s Daughter is ominous. Live Savings is charming. Captain Jim is heroic. The Clothes Horse is silly. Great stuff! His rhymes rhyme properly and his prose is succinct. Glad I picked it up.

[David Tutt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixture of stories and verse by Allan Ahlberg. Another of the small books in the Penguin Children's 60s series.