Ghost Train

By Paul Yee, Harvey Chan and Molly Johnson

The story of a young Chinese girl who arrives in North America only to discover that her father has died building the railway.

This powerful, unforgettable and multi-award-winning tale is based on the lives of the Chinese who settled on the west coast of North America in the early 1900s.

Left behind in China by her father, who has gone to North America to find work, Choon-yi has made her living by selling her paintings in the market. When her father writes one day and asks her to join him, she joyously sets off, only to discover that he has been killed.

Choon-yi sees the railway and the giant train engines that her father died for, and she is filled with an urge to paint them. But her work disappoints her until a ghostly presence beckons her to board a train where she meets the ghosts of the men who died building the railway. She is able to give them peace by returning their bones to China where they were born.

Ghostly, magical and yet redeeming, this tale by Paul Yee is superbly illustrated by Harvey Chan.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7
Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Release date: Aug 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781773065793

Paul Yee

PAUL YEE was born in Spalding, Saskatchewan, and grew up in Vancouver's Chinatown. A former archivist, he now writes full time. His books have won many awards and honors, including the Governor General's Award (Ghost Train), the Ruth Schwartz Award (Ghost Train and Roses Sing on New Snow), and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award (Tales from Gold Mountain). He has won the Vancouver Book Award and been shortlisted for the BC Book Prize, and his books have been named to several lists, including NYPL Books for the Teen Age (Dead Man’s Gold), ALA Notables and Booklist's Top Ten Historical Fiction. Most recently, Paul’s young adult novel Money Boy was named a Stonewall Honor Book and he won the Vicky Metcalf Award for a body of work. Paul lives in Toronto.

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Reviews for Ghost Train

[mrcmyoung · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A chinese girl comes to America to reunite with her railroad worker father, only to find he has been killed in an accident. His ghost instructs her to use her artistic talents to paint a train that will carry the ghosts of other fallen Chinese railroad workers home. I would have liked an author's note referencing real statistics about Chinese railroad workers, but maybe that's something for students to investigate.