It was everything she’d always been looking for without even knowing she was looking for it. Kate had always thought of herself as the kind of person who would one day lead a secret double life, and she’d figured her second life would probably be something in the superhero or espionage line, rather than the secret-invisible-train-conductor line. But she couldn’t have been happier with how things had turned out. What I found was nuance, and I understand why Lev Grossman thought it was necessary. If Kate (and the railway) could save endangered species by moving them from place to place, why isn't the world fixed already? Because it's not that easy. He uses "The Golden Swift" to go deeper into the issues of environmental destruction, global warming, and animal endangerment. I resonated a lot with Kate when she realizes that as a human, she's inherently a "bad guy" even when she's doing "good guy" things. Even if we work to fix climate change, we're part of a system that's causing problems, simply by eating the food we eat and wearing the clothes we wear. I think that gray-area morality is important, and it could lead to some great conversations for young readers. I enjoyed this follow-up to The Silver Arrow. Kate and Tom have a bit of tension growing between them as they are each reaching ages where they want, and deserve, a bit more independence. Uncle Herbert is missing. A cassowary and a wolverine join in on the adventure, and we encounter new conductors and a new train. Kate was crouched in the cab of the Silver Arrow, sweating from the heat, her knees aching, as she scraped and shoved around inside its firebox with a ridiculously long-handled rake to try to get the fire going. It was hard work, and it wasn’t helping that the Silver Arrow was giving her a hard time while she did it.

The newer animal companions weren’t nearly as endearing to me as the ones from the first book (especially The Fishing Cat!), though the wolverine has his moments. I liked Jag as a new character, but wished he had been developed even further. The scene with him and Kate fixing up his project was one of my favorites, though. I liked the idea of the Barracuda and would have loved to see it featured more than it was. I hope there will be at least one more book to finish this series off.As a parent, caregiver, or teacher, please be aware that this book discusses loss, and subjects such as Chernobyl, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the Red Zone in France, and Hitler are mentioned in this book. I didn’t like this one quite as much as the first but I still enjoyed seeing Kate and Tom again. This one takes on a more serious tone while the first book focuses more on the magical aspects. The more mature conversations about animal endangerment and conservation are important, though. I liked how the author showed how complex these issues can be to solve. There’s a part involving a former animal character that brought tears to my eyes. Grossman spins a tale that weaves environmental awareness and protection with fantasy. Middle grade readers will learn about a wide variety of species and see how interconnected we all are. I read The Silver Arrow. Then I read the first 2 books of The Magicians trilogy (very different). Now I've read the Golden Swift. Is this one of those times when you know something I don’t, but you’re not just coming out and saying it?”

Or not literally. She could actually have been a little bit happier. Kate wasn’t complaining—it had been drummed into her in Social and Emotional Learning class that complaining was not a productive way to deal with personal challenges, and she figured her Social and Emotional Learning teacher had probably had her share of personal challenges since her name was Ms. Tinkler. And, the author shows how restoring balance to the environment is complicated, and fraught with errors and danger. It's a disheartening thing for Kate and Jag to discover, but shows the book’s readers how restoring an environment is something that involves countless individuals and communities working together. Still. It was much heavier than "The Silver Arrow," and I ended the book feeling more sad than hopeful. I'm hoping for a third installment with a little more magic.A lot has changed for Kate in a year. She and Tom are now full-fledged conductors of the steam-powered, animal-saving Great Secret Intercontinental Railway. Life is good! It turns out that everything in nature is connected, and if you pull out one piece, it all starts falling apart. And finally, complaint number five was that she couldn’t even go out on the Silver Arrow anymore because Uncle Herbert had disappeared! He was the one who gave Kate her missions. That was how things were done. But she hadn’t seen him for two months, and no one—not Tom, not their parents, not the Silver Arrow, not the porcupine who lived in the woods behind her house—had any idea what had happened to him. Whereas The Silver Arrow focuses on shuttling animals to safer locales, The Golden Swift is more focused on trying to find the right balance for the earth. Just like The Silver Arrow, The Golden Swift does tend to get a bit heavy-handed when discussing humans' impact on the earth, animals, and climate change. Plus she felt like she’d outgrown her old elementary school friends, and she somehow hadn’t managed to find any new friends to replace them with. She wondered sometimes if it wasn’t just a tiny bit the Silver Arrow’s fault—if spending so much time talking to a steam train and saving animals made it harder to relate to her classmates who led normal lives.

Grossman takes care to always keep his target audience in sight, so while this is an engaging read filled with terrific illustrations as before, it is a timely and relevant read too as it takes on all that humans are doing to endanger our planet and the many species that inhabit it, used to inhabit it, and may not soon inhabit it if more steps aren't taken. While that sounds like it makes for depressing reading it doesn't; it makes for informed and thought-provoking reading, which is exactly what Middle Schoolers could use more of. Tell me, humans: What happens when you meet a wild animal in a field or a forest? What does that animal do?” Children with magical talking steam trains are thrilled by their clever new plan to rescue endangered animals.

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The follow up to The Silver Arrow. The Golden Swift is good, but not as enjoyable as the first book. The Golden Swift has some heavier subject material - lots of information on the consequences of reintroducing animal species to their native habitats. But it wasn’t one of those adventures that happens once and then you have to remember and savor and treasure it for the rest of your otherwise uneventful life. Since her birthday, Kate and Tom had gone on about a dozen trips on the Silver Arrow. At first she’d tried to keep a journal of them, but that had lasted about a trip and a half before she got lazy about it, and then some rabbits ate it, so that was that. She guessed she just wasn’t a journal-keeping person. But she’d helped hundreds of animals get where they needed to go, or get away from whatever they needed to get away from, or find whomever or whatever they were looking for. She’d ridden the Silver Arrow down deep tunnels, across luminous blue glacier crevasses, past secret vine-covered temples deep in sweltering equatorial rain forests. It can't be that simple," she said. "I mean, can you really just go . . . messing around with nature like that?" Tiny gears in the vast sacred machinery of the natural world were starting to turn. As of tonight the universe was a very little bit less broken. The sequel to The Silver Arrow. Readers see the continued adventures of Kate and Tom as they continue their work to save endangered animals. Unfortunately, Uncle Herbert has gone missing so Kate decides to go rogue and take the Silver Arrow out to look for him. With help from the cassowary who runs the rail yard and a grouchy wolverine, Tom and Kate set out to follow some vague clues and locate Herbert. Along the way, they meet two other conductors their ages. Kate already knows Jag from school; Wren is a new friend that Tom connects with. Together, they set out to protect endangered species and reestablish animals in their former habitats. As readers would expect, some relocations are successful and some are not. The four are confronted with different animals who want to rid the world of humans and stop the work of the Great Secret Intercontinental Railway. Even the Board of Directors of the GSIR becomes involved.

You have no idea how hard I have to work! I never know what to do, I’m just making it up all the time! And talk about easy--everything’s easy for you. You want to sing, you just sing. You want friends, you just make friends. You do whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it! Do you have any idea what I would give to be able to do that?” P.179 I loved the blend of magic, animals, and climate change in episode one in this duology - The Silver Arrow. If only there was such a solution to help steady the wobbling climate systems of our planet, to ensure we don't lose any more of our amazing animal species, both big and small.Like with the first book, I also listened to this one mostly via audiobook and enjoyed the narration. I would recommend having the physical or e-copy on hand as there are illustrations, though. A group of talking farm animals catches wind of the farm owner’s intention to burn the barn (with them in it) for insurance money and hatches a plan to flee. They meet another conductor, Jag, who works with the Golden Swift, a different train, who is not only moving animals around the world, as Kate is doing, but is also attempting to return certain creatures to their original habitats. Interestingly, Jag also goes to Kate's school, and made the school musical, so Kate’s a little annoyed with him.