The Railway Children

When their father is taken away one night for reasons nobody will explain, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis move with their mother to a small house in the country beside a railway line. The line becomes their world: they wave to the London train, make friends with Perks the porter and an old gentleman who travels on the 9.15, save a train from a landslide by waving red petticoats, rescue a boy hurt in a tunnel and shelter a Russian exile. Roberta slowly learns the truth about their father, and the ending on the station platform is one of the most moving in children's books.

E. Nesbit published the novel in 1906, and its mix of real hardship and everyday adventure set a pattern for family stories after it. Karen Savage reads all fourteen chapters alone, in about five hours.