Warren, Andrea. We rode the orphan trains.

WARREN, Andrea. We rode the orphan trains. Houghton Mifflin. 132p. illus. bibliog. index, c2001. 0-618-43235-3. $8.95. JSA

The story of the orphan trains (about 1900-1933), which took children from impoverished conditions in eastern US cities to the Midwest in hope of finding homes for them, is fascinating to a wide range of readers. In this well-researched book, Warren writes simply, focusing on the experiences of particular individuals (interviewed by Warren) who rode the trains and round lives they could not otherwise have imagined. The anxiety of the riders comes through as the trains stop at one city or town, then another, and local people look the children over, comment on them, then select or reject one child or another and take the chosen ones home with them. Some were treated as virtual slaves; others found loving families. Again and again, the riders tell of their desire to learn of their birth parents and families, if such still lived, and the roadblocks that made their search so difficult.

Warren humanizes the organizations, principally the Children's Aid Society, and the male and female agents who rode with the children and later visited them in their new homes the next day and sometimes as much as two years later to be sure they were being treated well. Years later, more said the orphan trains were a good idea than denigrated them. The book is youth formatted but will be of interest to adults too. Edna Boardman, Bismarck, ND