The Cable Car and the Dragon

By Herb Caen

Book Overview

This is the rollicking tale of the adventures of Charlie, the youngest cable car. Only sixty years old, he is tired of the same old rut. One night as he's puffing himself up Nob Hill, he hears a lot of excitement down below: Chinese New year! Suddenly, Charlie takes a right turn at Jackson Street, rather than the left he has taken for sixty years, and he finds himself in the middle of the parade. There he meets a friendly dragon named Chu Chin Chow, who is bored with his job. Charlie treats Chu to a cable car ride that looks as if it will end in a disastrous plunge into the San Francisco Bay--unless a miracle occurs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811810542
• ISBN13: 9780811810548
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 9.0" x 7.4"
• Age Range: 12 years and under
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 7

Customer Reviews

Fun for children and adults....

You don't have to be from San Fran to love this little story, although I am sure that it helps. The plot follows Charlie the cable car as he and a favorite passenger (the narrator, who is Caen himself, of course) leave the cable car routes and decide to explore their hometown of San Francisco, coming into contact with Chu, a Chinese New Year's dragon. Caen's legendary wit is surprisingly well-suited to this kind of writing; I loved his personification of the young cable car (he compares Charlie's voice to "a piece of wood being rubbed across steel"). Byfield's watercolors help tell the story (making the book a good mixture of visuals and text) but are also pleasures in and of themselves. The story does not have a very specific and blunt point for children to take away (which is fine with me). That said, it does imply that thinking out of the box (or off the trolley routes) is good and that making friends with people from other cultures is beneficial. Kind of appropriate for San Francisco when you think about it.