Subway Story by Julia Sarcone-Roach (Knopf, 2011) tells the story of Jessie, one particular subway car built in the 1960s for the subways of New York City. She loves her life of carrying people around the city, but as the years go by, she becomes one of many outdated city cars.
After years of neglect, she was recycled into the ocean (off the coast of Delaware), where fish used her structure as a man-made coral reef. I was not familiar with the ecological needs for such a structure in the ground, but the Afterward helped me understand it.
Raisin, being a train fanatic, really enjoyed the story of a train who lived beyond her use as a train, and it opened up a conversation about recycling. The illustrations, which are acrylic paintings, showed the changing look of the subway cars and the people through the years; personally, the gorgeous art was my favorite aspect of the book.
