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    When the Whistle Blows
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    When the Whistle Blows
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    When the Whistle Blows
    Audiobook3 hours

    When the Whistle Blows

    Written by Fran Cannon Slayton

    Narrated by Peter Berkrot

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Meet a town and a train and a time and a boy-Jimmy Cannon. And meet his father-as strong as a Mallet locomotive-whom Jimmy simply cannot figure out! But who, in a dramatic and unexpected twist, turns out to be so much more than Jimmy ever knew.

    In a book that goes to the core of boyhood-its Halloween mischief, its hunting day mystery, its championship football game surprise, and its nighttime adventures-Fran Cannon Slayton brings her listeners to the breathtaking crossroads of an unforgettable West Virginia railroad town, a family that matters, and adulthood itself.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 20, 2010
    ISBN9781441826718
    Unavailable
    When the Whistle Blows

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    Reviews for When the Whistle Blows

    4/5

    50 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A series of stories from a boy's life, growing up in a West Virginia railroad town in the 1940's, facing the changes that come with growing up and with time.
    • 2/5
      It is not Me and Caleb.
    • 4/5
      A series of stories from a boy's life, growing up in a West Virginia railroad town in the 1940's, facing the changes that come with growing up and with time.
    • 5/5
      Told in vignettes set on All Hallow's Eve 1943-1949, this is the story of Jimmy Cannon, a boy determined to follow in his father's footsteps and be a railroad man in a small West Virginia town. Beautiful writing brought the setting to life and I fell in love with the characters. I didn't think I liked vignettes, but I couldn't put this book down. Highly recommended, especially for fans of Richard Peck.
    • 3/5
      A coming-of-age story set in a Rowlesburg WV from 1943 to 1949. The Cannon men have always worked on the steam engines at the Baltimore & Oriole railroad. Jimmy can hardly wait to grow up and take his turn as a machinist. His father keeps warning his boys that the era of the steam engine is coming to an end and that a good education will give them more options, but Jimmy’s older brothers – Bill and Mike both quit school at sixteen to work on the engines.

      The book shines a light on boyhood – night time mischief, football games, first day of deer hunting season, favorite teachers and hated principal. It’s also an exploration of the father-son relationship, and how one boy struggles to figure out just what kind of man his father is.

      Slayton has organized the work as a series of snapshots. Each of the seven chapters takes place on the same calendar date but in seven successive years. I thought she handled this pretty well, though if the reader doesn’t notice the year changing (chapter subheadings are not something I usually read), it can be confusing.
    • 3/5
      Readers follow Jimmy Cannon's life between 1943 and 1949 as he relates events that are taking place in the little West Virginia town where his father is the railroad foreman. Each of the chapters takes place on All Hallows' Eve of that particular year, his father's birthday and a day that "you never know what kind of exciting things just might head down the tracks on All Hallows' Eve-- besides the trains, I mean." The ordinary events in this coming-of-age story are bittersweet and quietly luminous, and make for an enjoyable and nostalgic read.
    • 4/5
      I'll be honest. I have NO IDEA why I requested this book. I'm not very far in, but I was captured by the beginning. Will keep you posted.

      I enjoyed it. I don't normally read "boy books". Each chapter is another year in Jimmy's life in West Virginia. It's a small railroad town. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys books about small town life, railroads, the South or typical boy books.
    • 5/5
      Slayton, F.C. (2009). When the Whistle Blows. New York: Philomel Books.9780399251894162 pages.Appetizer: Rooted in the history of 1940s Rowlesburg, West Virginia, this fictional story shares how Jimmy spends each All Hallows' Eve starting with the year he's twelve or thirteen to the time he's about eighteen or nineteen. Over the years, Jimmy and his friends and family deal with the loss of a loved one, seek revenge for a prank, battle for a day off of school, and compete in an intense football game, among other things.The opening on the first page (quoted below) and the following descriptions of the space and of Jimmy's world sucked me in and kept me reading. For example, I absolutely love the description on mage five:"It's cold out here. The fog's oozing down the sides of the mountains. Typical West Virginia October. But not typical Rowlesburg. I don't think I've ever been outside so late--or so early?--in my whole life. I blink to get my bearings. The town's different this time of night--like a log all hollowed out with dark rot. There are no bunches of us boys kicking the can in the street. No ladies headed towards the five-and-dime, swatting their kids in line behind them. Just lampposts and pavement and fog. Even the echo of the Mallet engine's whistle sounds like a ghost of its daylight self."Nice, right?Jimmy is growing up with the whistles of the trains always in the background and it seems with death always near by, since working the rails is dangerous work. As Jimmy ages, he takes on dealing with his evolving relationships with his older brothers and father. His father desires for Jimmy to stay in school and graduate instead of quitting to work on the railroad as the rest of his family has done. But Jimmy would like nothing more than to join his father and brothers.I love the structure of the book, showing a short piece of Jimmy's life during the Halloween season and continue to grow the same tensions and reference the events of the previous years. Very well put together.As I continued reading though, I did start to wonder about the lack of racial representation. Part of this is because in the first story, Jimmy is woken by his brother to follow the adult men to a secret society meeting. When reading that, my mind immediately went to the dark KKK place. And it was a nice break that that wasn't the direction the story was going. But as the stories went on, racial tensions are never addressed. World War II only gets one or two brief references and all of the female characters in the book exist at the very periphery of the stories.Now, having given that critique, none of those things are the focus of the story. This is very much a boy book about the relationships among guys.Dinner Conversation:"Every time I go to jump on a steam train as it chugs its way through Rowlesburg--Every time I throw out my hands to grab the rusty metal rungs and haul myself up onto the side of one of them black coal cars, hoisting my knees up over its churning, screeching wheels--Every single time I jump on a train--my heart thumps even noisier in my ears than the clanking of the old iron horse I'm hopping onto" (p. 1)."The society? A pilot light goes on in the back of my head. Whisperings I've heard before. Rumors about men meeting in the dead of night. Of unseen rituals. Secret initiations. My memory kick-starts, recollecting the way me and Mike--and in my earliest memories, even Bill--used to peek down the steps late at night, way after bedtime, watching Dad walk out the kitchen's door with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. Going to a meeting, Mary Etta, he'd say to Mom. A society meeting. A meeting we kids weren't supposed to know anything about, much less discuss" (p. 7)."Meet me back here at eight o'clock to defend the honor of this Platoon!"Cheers go up as if we're already avenged. Everyone gets on their bikes and rides off towards home. Everyone but Neil Fisher."Okay, ol'Platoon buddy, what's the plan?""I'll 'splain you the whole thing when we meet back here at eight, Neil.""So you don't have one then."I look over at him. "Right" (pp. 33-34)."Mr. Evans came to Rowlesburg direct from New York City, and he thinks hunting is what he calls "savage." Us kids think he's what we call "an idiot." Lonnie Brice, who's been in the tenth grade for the last three years, called him a daggone Yankee to his face in the hallway just yesterday. Lonnie got a three-day suspension for that little bit of protest. So then Wigger Bowles did the same thing, and he got a three-day suspension, too. It wasn't until Mr. Evans had suspended about ten other boys that he finally figured out that he'd been suspending them all so they wouldn't have to be in school tomorrow, which is the first day of hunting season. Of course that's exactly what they'd wanted in the first place, so Mr. Evans had to back up and cancel every last one of their suspensions. Dad says they got all kinds of sense in New York City excepting the common kind" (p. 49).To Go with the Meal:To bring When the Whistle Blows into a class, I would probably read one of the early chapters aloud around Halloween. Then to incorporate a creative activity, a teacher could assign students to write their own All Hallows' Eve reflections or works of fictions. Students could also voice or write the stories of how their own families arrived in the U.S.A teacher could also include the book into social studies lessons about American life in the 1940s. A teacher could focus on the book's sense of regionalism and the fact that Rowlesburg was a railroad town and the economic impact that has on a location as technologies change or companies close. A student interested in trains would probably enjoy the way they enter into the settings and tensions.Tasty Rating: !!!!
    • 4/5
      This is a series of interconnected short stories that all have to do with one young boy’s life in 1940’s rural West Virginia. Jimmy lives in a town that is mainly kept alive by the steam engines that come through. Life is tough, but his dad (and eventually both of his brothers) work on steam engines – the ones that Jimmy loves so much. However, life is changing as Jimmy comes of age and must decide what he wants to be – just like his dad and brothers, or more than them. The stories are all set on Halloween, one for each year. They mostly do not review information from previous stories, although things are alluded to. There is one story, though, that stands out because of the reviewing of information. They are definitely historical in nature, and there are some stories where the country way of speaking is a little much. However, they are readable and you do become invested in Jimmy’s family and their lives. Jimmy has graduated from high school by the end of the book, making this an older youth book, but not a teen book as there is nothing that happens – either with drugs, alcohol or sex – that makes this of teen interest.
    • 5/5
      Everything in this book takes place on Halloween, advancing a year with each chapter. Jimmy, beginning at age 12, lives in a small town in West Virginia where the steam railroad dominates the economy. He's anxious to join the railroad, but his stern and unreadable father predicts that the diesel trains will do away with the jobs eventually. The reader gets an understanding of how new technology can change a way of life for an entire community, as well as a glimpse of how much more freedom kids used to have and how the independence was good in a way but also how it made things really wild. I think kids will like it, though some who are looking for action may not like the time spent on how Jimmy doesn't understand his father. Some of the pranks can be fun to read about, like when the new principal (a Yankee) threatened to expell anyone who didn't come to school on the first day of the hunting season. Some men in the town, led by Jimmy's father, secretly boarded up all of the doors and windows of the school in the night so that no one could go to school. Imagine that happening today!
    • 4/5
      Reading more like a collection of short stories than a novel Slayton has created a touching and intimate look at the life of her main character Jimmy and his family. Transitioning from one year to the next using the central focus of one particular day (in this case Halloween) allows for each individual snapshot to flow together in a way that provides readers a great view of Jimmy’s life and how he’s lived it. The transitions are abrupt in the way that we are able to discern that a new year has come upon us but not so abrupt that the story doesn’t work or that we’re unable to follow along with the premise.Where Slayton does a remarkable job is in showcasing the strong bond between Jimmy and his family. She does so delicately and in muted tones as we see festive, emotional and sometimes tragic events throughout the eyes of this boy. Slayton subtly shows his growth from a curious and precocious youngster into a thoughtful man while allowing him to maintain core values of tradition and family. Informing the story is the appearance of the local railroad through which the reader is threaded through the passage of time. Ever present in scene, dialogue or just as a thought in the mind of the reader it was this element that made the story more about home than anything else. The vivid imagery of Rowlesburg (Jimmy’s hometown) and it’s railroad industry allows the reader to really feel the character’s physical surroundings and relate to why it is that Jimmy has such a fondness for his hometown. In the end we learn that his life isn’t just all about the people he encountered but the place where he grew up and cherished. It informed his relationships and his decisions in a way any living and breathing family member would yet didn’t stand out as over the top or too dramatic a character.In my opinion this book would be a great quick read for a reluctant boy. Not only does it focus on a male protagonist the situations tend to show situations that a boy may relate well to — pranks, sports, and general mischief. Even better, is the fact that within those elements are interwoven the more tangibly emotional aspects of family dynamics, work ethic and sense of belonging. There are some soulful and meaningful lessons to be learned.This is not to say that the book is not appealing to girls as well as I enjoyed it a great deal. I just envision it’s greatest strength (characterization and plot) appealing to boys who don’t typically enjoy reading as much as playing sports or video games. Further, the fact that it is a quick read doesn’t diminish it’s impact on the reader. The story is in depth and emotional providing an entertaining and enjoyable journey from start to finish.
    • 5/5
      This book focused on the life of Jimmy Cannon and the things that happened to him on Halloween night for several years. This young man from West Virginia loves the railroad and wants to follow in his dad’s footsteps. His dad wants much more for his son. This book touches on change in a young boys life, change in a town and country. I believe the book will be loved by both the young and old alike. I think the boys in my class will like it and maybe even a few of my girls. Once again it touches on an area of history our kids know nothing about. I can’t wait to recommend it to my students.
    • 4/5
      Around the end of World War II, the tiny town of Rowlesburg, West Virginia, is undergoing some great and affecting changes. For years and years, steam engines have been a way of life for those living in Rowlesburg, but now there are rumors of diesel engines, and being out of a job, and the town turning into a ghost.In the midst of this all is Jimmy Cannon, a typical boy who wants to have fun with his friends and have his father get off his back. Jimmy’s father wants him to escape the dying Rowlesburg, but Jimmy has his heart set on working on the railroads, just like every Cannon before him. As a result, he feels like his father is always working against him. As the years pass, however, and Jimmy gets into scrapes or learns lessons, he realizes that his impenetrable father may be one of the best men he’ll ever know.If you like historical fiction coming-of-age vignettes, you can’t do any better than Fran Cannon Slayton’s debut, WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS. While it’s not the kind of fiction I usually enjoy, the voice, characters, setting, and stories are really all delightful.The synopsis heavily emphasizes Jimmy’s relationship with his father, but really, that theme is rather a gentle undercurrent throughout that builds into a touching ending. I enjoyed every vignette, one for every Halloween between 1943 and 1949. Each story stands strong alone and shows us what life is like for the teenaged Jimmy growing up in rural West Virginia. They’re entertaining, such as Jimmy’s friends’ Halloween mischief; they’re heartwarming, with the high school football championship game.Death, laughter, adolescent naivety, and growth weave in and out of the prose, which is age, gender, and regionally appropriate. Indeed, Jimmy’s voice feels remarkably genuine: you will not mistake him as anyone other than a boy growing up in mid-twentieth century America, and at the same time he is completely relatable.The development of Jimmy’s relationship with his father may have been a bit too subtle for me, given the importance the book seems to place on this pivotal relationship. It can occasionally make the vignettes feel disjointed. Overall, however, I am satisfied with the subtlety; we’re not hit over the head with news of their relationship, which allows us to understand and appreciate Jimmy and his father individually.Like I said earlier, historical fiction is not my forte, but even so I can see Jimmy’s stories resonated with me long after I closed this book. WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS has a magical and timeless appeal, and is probably one of the most understated debut books of the year, so I encourage you to pick this up if your interest is the slightest bit piqued. You will be rewarded for doing so.
    • 3/5
      This was sweet, although not overly exciting. It's very much a family tribute; based on stories from her father's teen years growing up in a railroad town in the 1940s. Each chapter take place on Halloween, so as each year goes by, you see how the family and the town is changing. It's so sincere and heartfelt, but not a lot happens - I suspect this is yet another book written for the YA audience that only adults will enjoy.