Family and Christmas have always been important to Chapel Hill writer, William Hooks. A year and a half ago, William Hooks came home to North Carolina and soon after, wrote The Mighty Santa Fe. (Macmillan, $14.95; ages 5-8). Hooks left Chapel Hill after seven years at UNC in 1950 to pursue a career of theater and dance in New York City. He returned after having successfully enjoyed this career and twenty-five years of chairing publication at Bank Street School, one of the most prestigious education colleges in the country.

While in New York, Hooks also managed to write forty-two children's books and twelve adult books on child development. Hooks was in New York for forty years and "except for one Christmas, I always came back. I have had a four-generation family Christmas for as long as I can remember." It makes sense that the first book he wrote after coming home puts Christmas and a four-generational family together.

William, the main character in The Mighty Santa Fe , is a train worshipper who must leave his train behind when he travels to a family reunion. What's worse, when he gets there he's overwhelmed by all his relatives, especially his great-grandmother the eccentric, shriveled-looking Granny Blue. His discomfort increases when the electricity fails and not even an old-fashioned picnic in front of the fire helps. Everything is strange to poor William, but in a subtle shift, strange becomes magical. In the middle of the night, Granny Blue guides him up attic stairs where he discovers a magical train, wondrous adventure, and begins a special relationship with his great-grandmother. William Hooks captures coming home to family in the way Southern writers do best. His expressions are evocative, his verb choices exciting, but best of all is his apparently effortless balancing. He lets readers believe reality and fantasy can merge and a warm family relationship can grow on a freezing cold Christmas eve night.

Hooks writes The Mighty Santa Fe in part from his childhood remembrances of being afraid of his great-grandmother, not so much because of her looks, but "because she was such an icon, she was a Civil War widow who'd been sainted by the three generations between us!"

Hooks is now ensconced in a comfy carriage house in Chapel Hill where he's discovered the joys of gardening and being surrounded by extended family that includes a niece, her husband, and their three young children. One of children, William, is the train buff and inspiration for The Mighty Santa Fe .

Hooks has always been committed to children. "First of all, I've always been surrounded by children. I come from a clan, not a family...I have forty-some first cousins. At Bank Street, there were always about 450 kids right underfoot from six months to fourteen years. But who isn't devoted to children? It's a human instinct!"