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The Box-Car Children (1924) by Gertrude Chandler Warner ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read the ebook version of The Box-Car Children for a book club. I would suggest reading the 1924 version, because the later versions were dumbed down to appeal to a younger audience. I have linked to the book at the end of this post.
This is the origin story of four children, Henry, Jess, Violet, and Benny. We are told that Henry is thirteen, Jess is twelve, and Benny is five years old. Given the fact that the author stated the ages of the first three, I think it is a good assumption that she just totally forgot to add Violet’s age. It is widely assumed that she is ten years old in this first book, though.
It’s simple: newly orphaned and afraid to live with their grandfather who they are told is a terrible person, the four run away to the woods and live in an abandoned box-car. They live happily and industriously in the woods and basically play house as a family.
I loved this book. All the children work together and take care of each other, making a happy little home for themselves. It might be unbelievable to some readers that these children knew what to do right away when newly orphaned, but I get the feeling from the backstory that they had been cooking and cleaning and making a home for themselves long before this final nail in the coffin, so to speak.
It only took three hours for me to read, and probably quicker for you if you have no distractions. I would recommend this earliest version, because it is more descriptive. From what I’m seeing about the 1942 re-write, it is watered down and not as detailed as the original, appealing to a younger audience. Some things were taken out or changed for safety concerns. For one example, the children are depicted as drinking water from streams, and these references are taken out in order to avoid any acting out of the story and sicknesses as a result. Another change is that the backstory as to how and why they were orphaned is totally taken out, as it is was viewed as potentially too dark for younger readers. References to child neglect were avoided all-together.
This was originally supposed to be a stand-alone book. Mrs. Warner added to the series much later, eventually penning 19 books in all before she died in 1979. She revised the original, and it was reissued in 1942 when there was a plan for a series.
As stated before, the first 19 books in The Box Car Children series were written by Gertrude Chandler Warner. All other books after 1976’s Benny Uncovers a Mystery were written by other authors. These books wouldn’t be revived until 1991, and new entries are still being published, the latest being in 2023. There are around 200 books involving the box car children characters to date.
Gertrude Chandler Warner (Apr 16, 1890 – Aug 30, 1979) was born in Connecticut to a well-to-do family. She knew from an early age that she wanted to be a writer. She wrote other books, but she was most famous for creating the Box Car Children series. In 1918, she became a first grade teacher, and taught for over thirty years. After revising her Box-Car Children book in 1942 in order to make it a children’s reader, she did not write a sequel until she retired from teaching. She never married and had no children of her own. She was 89 when she died.
After learning about Mrs. Warner, she is a real inspiration to me. Though it wasn’t her first book, she wrote The Box-Car Children at 34 years old, revised it at 52, and published the books all the way up to her 86th year. Pretty amazing. It’s never too late to write.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42796
