All right Stephen King fans, you’re getting a serious piece of Easter Eggery this fall. One Beryl Evans, known in the The Waste Lands (the third book in the Dark Tower series) as the author of Charlie the Choo-Choo, has apparently popped over to our dimension long enough to write us our own version of the children’s tale!
Simon and Schuster released details on the book, saying:
Fans of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower will definitely want this picture book about a train engine and his devoted engineer.
Engineer Bob has a secret: His train engine, Charlie the Choo-Choo, is alive…and also his best friend. From celebrated author Beryl Evans and illustrator Ned Dameron comes a story about friendship, loyalty, and hard work.
Readers of the Dark Tower will recall that while Charlie is a fictional character in the book that Jake buys in the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, he may also be alive and living in Gage Park. He also made an appearance in Stephen King’s The Cell. Beryl Evans already appeared before a packed crowd at San Diego Comic-Con last July…sort of. The new book will also feature illustrations by Ned Dameron, who is completely 100% real, and from our own current dimension.
And what of Beryl’s friend, Stephen King? He blurbed the book, saying, “If I were ever to write a children’s book, it would be just like this!”
Wait a minute….
You can get your own copy of Charlie the Choo-Choo on November 22nd (no guarantees it’ll lead you to a gunslinger, though) and prepare yourself for The Dark Tower when it hits theaters next February.
Any bets on how many people get this and read it to their kids? The next generation could end up scarred for life just because some BN clerk innocently puts this next to the Thomas the Tank Engine books.
Sweet! My kids needed new nightmare fuel!
Anyone else remember the pop-up board book version of “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon”? I was tempted to buy it for the collector element. But, I don’t think I’d have been able to sleep with it in the same house as me. It was the kind of book where you could just feel it watching, waiting for the lights to go out and for you to go to sleep. You would hear it falling off the shelf, then crawling up the stairs, coming for you. . . . .
Really. Look at that picture of the bear with bug-eaten face if you wouldn’t have been thinking that at 4 a.m.
Anyhow, this reminds me of that.
Beryl Evans already appeared before a packed crowd at San Diego Comic-Con last July…sort of.
I’m reminded of the theory that’s bounced around those who I know that Robin Furth, despite the seeming multitude of evidence that she’s real, is actually merely an incredibly-crafted reference by King to Randall Flagg’s multiversal appearances (all bearing RF abbreviations). This just seems to add credence to such a tinfoil-hat theory! ;)
The Stephen King blurb reminds me of my absolute favorite recent blurb, for ‘Toad Words and Other Stories’ by T. Kingfisher (https://www.amazon.com/Toad-Words-Other-Stories-Kingfisher-ebook/dp/B00MFXJMGI/):
“Kingfisher writes like I would if I were using a pen name” – Ursula Vernon
(Yes, T. Kingfisher is her pen name.)
So we can shelve this with the Tom Gordon book, and the ones by Patrick Rothfuss about the thing under the bed … we’ll have a whole library of these soon. I’m gonna be such a fun grandparent some day.
Wow. Stephen King just played a (very cruel) joke on millions of youngsters and their parents. Bravo!
@1: I used to work at a B & N, and most of us were pretty knowledgeable about the books. For those who weren’t, we would write the section the book belonged in on a slip of paper and tuck it into the book to be reshelved. You’re probably right, though. Someone will put the book in the wrong section, and some kid will end up with a serious case of siderodromaphobia, a fear of trains. Yes, I had to look that up.
@3 I have that pop-up book. When I get this new one, it will go on the shelf with Tom Gordon and My Pretty Pony.
Been interested in this book since I first read about it way back when. Now I may get to win it!