All Aboard! Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine by Monica Kulling

A young black boy is handy with tools and dreams of being an engineer so he can work on steam trains. In 1860, that was a big dream...

Tundra Books provided me with this children's picture book for review. It's part of the Great Idea Series. Bill Slavin has illustrated the story.

Elijah's family escaped to Canada to avoid slavery, and Elijah had a knack for repairing the farm tools. His family saved their money and sent him to Scotland to train as an engineer.

When he returned, he asked for a job on the steam train. They gave him one: "I got ashcat work if you wannit it. Ain't hard. You bail it in. You grease the pig." After Elijah said, "Excuse me?", the boss told him that meant shovelling coal into the firebox and oiling the wheels and bearings. Since it was all he could get, he took the job.

But Elijah worried about the "grease monkey" who got into the places that needed oil where Elijah didn't fit. Sometimes they got hurt. So when he got home in the evenings, he started engineering a new oiler that would work automatically...

Mr. Slavin's illustrations are full of the colors and sounds (use your imagination) of the era.  Ms. Kulling has done a very nice job of telling the history tale and including some vernacular of the time. This is written for ages 5-8. I'd recommend this book as a very good way to introduce your child to history and show how much fun it can be read about people in our past. The book is now available at your local bookstore. Go take a look at it, you'll like it.