{"id":3047,"date":"2013-09-16T07:41:15","date_gmt":"2013-09-16T13:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3047"},"modified":"2013-09-16T07:42:07","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T13:42:07","slug":"its-history-its-engineeringits-the-landscape-its-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=3047","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It&#8217;s history, it&#8217;s engineering,<br>it&#8217;s the landscape, it&#8217;s the West!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/Kids-Teen_BrianFloca_no_credit2_jpg_210x1000_q85a.jpg\"><strong><font size=6>&#8220;<\/strong><\/font><em><strong><font color=\"#777777\">The more I learned about how the machines worked, the more interesting they became to me\u2014in the same way that a puzzle can become more interesting as you begin to solve it. And the more I thought about and read about and then saw the landscape through which the transcontinental line traveled, the more amazed I became. Some of that landscape is beautiful and frightening in its openness, emptiness, grandeur. I remember cruising along state Route 233 in Nevada, absolutely alone, and imagining what it would have been like to be out there, building that line in 1869.\u201d<\/font><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s Brian Floca, pictured here, on his beautiful new picture book, <strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781416994152\">Locomotive<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (Atheneum\/Richard Jackson Books, September 2013). Today over at <em>Kirkus<\/em>, we talk about his research. That link is <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/features\/epic-intimate-ilocomotivei\/\">here<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p><center>* * * * * * *<\/center> <\/p>\n<p><em>Photo of Brian Floca used with permission of the publisher.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The more I learned about how the machines worked, the more interesting they became to me\u2014in the same way that a puzzle can become more interesting as you begin to solve it. And the more I thought about and read about and then saw the landscape through which the transcontinental line traveled, the more amazed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-interviews","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}