From the world of The Dark Tower - Charlie the Choo-Choo

I love King and I love the fact that he decided to make a children's book. Oops, I mean Mr. Evans! I read this to my daughter upon purchase. She is six, and although she did cry when she thought Charlie would die and found is face a little creepy, she loved the story and it really engaged her on a different level then the generic children's book. She loved it so much she put her name in it and it already has found a prominent place on her shelf.

This is the magic of King. This is what he does. And I hope this is not the last time that King, I mean, Mr. Evans, will write a kid's book. The detail of the story and the mood is incredible, and you can feel the energy of the book pulsating within as you read it. It is that good.

Bravo!!!

With the creepy book the Jake read in the Dark Tower series, you can introduce your child to the creepiness of the Mid-World. There have been different opinions on if this should be okay for children. While the imagery is creepy at times and the children look like they're screaming, but not with happiness, the story is okay to read to a child. Maybe one day, when your child is grown, they might find this book to read to their own kids, and pause to see how scary that train looks.

With the creepy book the Jake read in the Dark Tower series, you can introduce your child to the creepiness of the Mid-World. There have been different opinions on if this should be okay for children. While the imagery is creepy at times and the children look like they're screaming, but not with happiness, the story is okay to read to a child. Maybe one day, when your child is grown, they might find this book to read to their own kids, and pause to see how scary that train looks.

I have been waiting for this book for 20 years. It's exactly what it should be. It's a kids' book that would creep kids out. Had this been in my library as a child, I never would have touched it. Not with my hands anyway. I might have kicked it, literally, into the kitchen near the trash. This is a fairly disturbing book.

Not scary at all, this book is actually quite delightful. The fanciful language recalls another era and makes the book quite a joy to read and there is a highly valuable lesson to be learned within. The book was originally written in 1942. It is one of a kind book that I would recommend and plan on gifting to friends & family.

Charlie the Choo Choo will only be of interest to those who are Dark Tower fans.

It is as described in the book.

My wife and kids read it and couldn't make much of it. They haven't read the Dark Tower

Neat little piece of literature here. It's really cool that this was made. My mother loves Stephen King, so when I found this neato book that was made as if it were from the Dark Tower universe, I had to get it. She was thrilled.

I got this for my 2 month old grandson. It's never to early to start him on Stephen King. If Stephen King wrote children's books and pretneded to be someone named Beryl Evans. (This is really going to lull my grandson into a fall sense of who Stephen King is and what he writes.)

I bought this book for my grandson because he loves anything to do with trains. He loves this book so much that he wants you to read it to him at least 5 times a week before bedtime! he is 2 1/2 years old. The pictures are amazing!!

love love love this!! i am a super huge king fan and this is a great way to get my son started on his king journry! goes along with kings writings and is just super cool! can not say enought good things :) even if it wasnt for my son i would have had to have this for my collection!!

Had to get this book. It's like Stephen King can't stop writing about The Dark Tower. I loved the whole series, and this was a treat. I read this to my kids, and they thought it was creepy and fun. Write more like this!!

Jorge Harrington

The story is just as it was written in The Waste Lands, the third Dark Tower book. I am glad to have this, it makes my collection of Steven King books that much more complete. It has proven an interesting read for my toddler nephew, too, who's really into trains and other vehicles.

Get this if your kid likes trains. I love Stephen King, especially dark tower, and got it in hopes to introduce son to midworld... In my opinion it could have stood a bit more dark tower and little less"normal". Basically just a story about a train and the guy who drives it. :(

I have wanted them to do this book since Wastelands first came out. It's high quality and exactly what you'd want as a fan. My ONLY problem with it is that they slapped a Stephen King quote on the front.

Yes, yes, I'm well-aware that Stephen King's name on the book will help it to sell better in stores. But the fact remains that Stephen King didn't have a quote on the book cover of the "real" Charlie the Choo Choo.

And the quote takes away from the realism of the book for me.

Still, four stars out of five. It's a fun item to have.

This is the beginning of the merchandising for the Dark Tower film that will be released in 2017. Just to whet your appetite, so to speak. The text is taken directly from Stephen King's third installment of his Dark Tower series, so there's no surprises there. The illustrations are based on the original artist's work, Ned Dameron, who did all of the illustrations in the third Tower book. Are the children smiling and happy or is something else going on here? You decide.

It's OK. I had fun reading it once over. I loved the account of Charlie the Choo-Choo in the Dark Tower series but to me the illustrations didn't smack of the time the book was supposed to have been written and the content didn't match up with the character of the real Charlie Choo-Choo. I guess I was expecting more creep factor as that's how jaded I am. I also hated Black House, so there's that. It's a cool little accompaniment to the series though.

Charlie the Choo Choo emerges from the pages of Stephen King’s Gunslinger series, from The Wastelands, to be exact. King wrote this children’s story under the pseudonym of Beryl Evans and the initial release was at San Diego Comic Con this year. Issues have been offered by scalpers on the internet for well over 5 C-notes.

This is the exact picture book that fans of the series pictured in their heads. Charlie the Choo Choo and Engineer Bob are never exactly sinister in this rendering but surely “off kilter” in a way that makes your ill at ease. The illustrations are from the studio of Ned Dameron who provided the brilliant renderings for The Waste Lands.

The basic story is how Charlie is scheduled to be replaced by the Burlington Zephyr Diesel Locomotive. Charlie is left to rust in a vacant field, over grown with weeds and serving as a home for field mice. Nice child’s story, yes? But there’s that edge, there is something that is instilled in the book more by the illustrations than by the words.

I wouldn’t worry about giving this book to children but the better choice would be to gift it to your friends and relatives who are fans of the King.

Do you like trains? Have you ever taken a ride on a train?

The author, Beryl Evans, has written a riveting book about Charlie the Choo-Choo, and his Engineer Bob. They both worked for the Mid-World Railway Company, and their route was from St Louis to Topeka. This was a very busy line, and Bob and Charlie were the very best. They were the fastest and the best. Charlie was a 402 Big Boy locomotive, and he ran on coal. Together had many, many fun runs together, until one day, Bob could hear someone singing. When you read this book, you will discover who was singing, and several other big secrets.

Adults will enjoy reading this book to their children, and children who can read by themselves will also love this story. This is the kind of story with a lesson to be learned, and often those are the very best. This is a fun story that may elicit many questions from children. What is coal? How does a train run on coal? Who was singing? The illustrations by Ned Dameron are bright, vivid and colorful, and they depict Charlie the Choo-Choo and Engineer Bob in all their glory. What a wonderful life for both of them. And, now we have newer trains, but are
they as much fun as Charlie Choo-Choo? As Stephen King, another author, has said, if he were to write a children's book it would be just like this!

Recommended. prisrob 11-22-16

As a King fan and teacher, I purchased this with my students in mind. I should have know with King as the author it would have inappropriate language. Not suitable for children. Good story line and the inappropriate word can be skipped over if the kids are young enough to not be able to read it on their own.

I bought this book strictly for the connection to Stephen King's Dark Tower book series, but found it an interesting (perhaps a little unconventional) children's book in its own right. A close look at the illustrations does reveal that Charlie the Choo-Choo might be just a little "off," but the story is a pretty straightforward tale of friendship, loyalty, and usefulness. This is a neat little book for fans of Stephen King, perhaps less so for little kids who just want to hear a bedtime story.

If you are trying to indoctrinate the littlest Stephen King fans in your household, realize that the pictures (check out Charlie's facial expression in the photo below) and storyline might be a little unsettling or sad to the smallest kids.

I misunderstood the description in that I thought this book was written by Steven King (although his comment does appear on the cover) and that it was more closely related to the Dark Tower book series. My error on the author mistake but not on the relation to the series. Other than the face on the train, nothing in the book actually relates to the Dark Tower series. That said, the story itself is enjoyable. The book was in excellent condition. A good addition to my children book collection (although not for very young ones).

When I found out that Stephen King was releasing Charlie the Choo Choo as a real physical book, I absolutely had to have it. This book plays a huge part in The Waste Lands, the third installation in The Dark Tower series. In The Waste Lands, Jake Chambers, one of the central characters, purchases Charlie the Choo Choo by Beryl Evans in a second hand book store, and it ends up being the key to solving a problem later on. As a stand alone book, it brings part of that incredible story to life as a prop that further immerses you in the world Mr. King has created. It is perfect for any die-hard Dark Tower fans.

Normally I wouldn't review a children's book. Nothing against them but it doesn't seem quite right due to me not being the "true" target audience, the speed the books can be read, the reduced attention span of their target audience, and the lack of character and story development. Writing a children's book is definitely different than writing a horror novel; reviewing them in the same manner isn't really fair. Since I have children, I obviously have read more than a handful but let's stick to the hard truth: the reason that I'm reviewing this book is because it was written by Stephen King.

The story involves Charlie the Choo-Choo from the Dark Tower series and tells a little about his history. As a children's book, the book works. It follows the traditional story flow and is not scary or spooky. If you read the text only, then the story is absolutely appropriate for children. It's when paired with the pictures by Ned Dameron that the story gets creepy. Charlie the Choo-Choo looks just off enough to be creepy. The coloring is also not vibrant nor happy; it adds to the creepy factor. And then there is the more subtle items like the children off the train are happy and smiling but the children on the train are crying and sad. Most kids should like the book but I don't see it becoming one of their favorites. (Neither my 10 year old nor my 4 year old were taken by the book, pun not intended.) Fans of the Dark Tower series will enjoy it but keep in mind that at 24 pages of a children's book, it's not filling in any gaps in the mythos. Instead it's providing a small splash of color to one of the characters.

The book “Charlie the Choo Choo” plays a small but important part in Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series. “Charlie the Choo Choo” is a children’s book yet the illustrations, particularly of Charlie’s smile, gave a young Jake Chambers nightmares. Readers of the Dark Tower Series who longed to read “Charlie the Choo Choo” can now do so thanks to Beryl Evans (a/k/a Stephen King).

Stephen King does an excellent job with “Charlie the Choo Choo” making it a suitable read for both children and adults (especially Dark Tower fans). As a children’s book, the story works just fine – the book is a little sad at times but has a happy ending. In other words, it is a typical children’s story and not a scary Stephen King book (in fact, since the front of the book says it is written by Beryl Evans, children and unsuspecting parents may not even know it is written by Stephen King even though there is a tongue in cheek blurb by King on the front cover). Yes, Charlie’s “facial” expression changes often and even a happy Charlie looks a bit menacing, but I don’t think many children, unlike Jake Chambers in the Dark Tower books, will have nightmares about Charlie. As an adult Stephen King fan, I loved the Dark Tower references (I love the title page which makes the book seem like it really did come out of Jake Chambers’ world) although I do have to wonder why Charlie’s train number was nine and not nineteen. As for the illustrations – they are wonderful, including the many expressions on Charlie’s “face”. Well done!

Ohhhhh the way the words tell a story and the pictures a complete different one....Just this thing would have made of this book an horror masterpiece, but as I even know that it is Blaine we are talking about here.....

Il modo in cui le parole raccontano una storia completamente diversa da quella illustrata dalle immagini basterebbe per rendere questo libro - non per bambini - un piccolo capolavoro dell'orrore, ma se ci aggiungiamo che qui stiamo parlando di Blaine.....

By Beryl Evans, no less!

How tongue in cheek can you get? I guess it makes sense because why not?

So glad I stumbled across this.

Rating is purely for "I can't believe they actually did this" factor.

The story itself is, of course, ridiculous.

Charlie the Choo Choo is a creepy children's book originally written by Claudia y Inez Bachman. I don't know who this Beryl Evans is but she didn't write the book. I tried reading it to my little brother but the images scared him. The children in the illustrations look scared. My little brother kept having nightmares and kept writing "Blaine is a pain" over and over again. He looks out the window looking for a red king or something. Dont buy this book. Get a book of riddles instead like Riddle me Dumb.

THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR CHILDREN.
Be wary. I read it once, and now feel compelled to read it over and over.
Another reviewer was right. It was not written by "Beryl Evans" but by Claudia y Inez Bachman.
It can open doors.
There must be a riddle in it though, so i will try to read it again.

I ordered this book because I am an avid Stephen King fan and the write up in the the store ad left me with the impression that this story was somehow related to the story in The Dark Tower series in which there was a train named Blaine. After receiving the book and reading it I realized that it really doesn't have any connection to the Dark Tower series but I decided to keep it anyway.

Nice addition to a Stephen King collection. Even though this wasn't written by King, it is based on the Charlie the Choo-Choo books found throughout the Dark Tower series. Beryl Evans captures all of the creepiness and does it justice.

I am giving this one star, only from the perspective of a parent reviewing a children’s book. My 2 year old son picked up a “grab bag” of books from the library with a train theme. This book was included. The content and language are not appropriate for small children and the illustrations are downright creepy. Once I looked it up and realized it was written by Stephen King, it all made sense! But it’s definitely not a children’s book, or at least not one that most parents would find appropriate.

I was expecting something more dark than what I got. Other than some weird macabre drawings, it was a happy ending that is fitting for children. Which is good, I suppose, if that's who you are buying it for. But it was certainly not marketed that way.

I thought it was going to be more of a horror story based on the picture and the fact that it was written by Stephen King. I was woefully mistaken. It's just a run of the mill kid's train story. Ho-hum.

I have been waiting for this book for 20 years. It's exactly what it should be. It's a kids' book that would creep kids out. Had this been in my library as a child, I never would have touched it. Not with my hands anyway. I might have kicked it, literally, into the kitchen near the trash. This is a fairly disturbing book.

Book arrived today even though it was not due until 5/12/16.You can't beat that plus it is a lovely little book and my granddaughter will love it. Another reason is it was a very good price. Thank you. Tony