The Boxcar Children is a children's book series originally created and written by the American first-grade school teacher[1]Gertrude Chandler Warner and currently published by Penguin Random House. It was previously published through Albert, Whitman and Company until 2023. Today, the series includes more than 160 titles, with more being released every year.[2] The series is aimed at readers in grades 2–6.[3]
Originally published in 1924 by Rand McNally (as The Box-Car Children) and reissued in a shorter revised form in 1942 by Albert Whitman & Company,[4]The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden. They create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. They eventually meet their grandfather, who is a wealthy and kind man (although the children had believed him to be cruel). The children decide to live with the grandfather, who moves the beloved boxcar to his backyard so the children can use it as a playhouse. The book was adapted as the film The Boxcar Children in 2014 and the sequel novel Surprise Island was released as a film in 2018. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the original book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children".[5] In 2012 the original novel was ranked among the all-time "Top 100 Chapter Books", or children's novels, in a survey published by School Library Journal.[6]
In the subsequent books, the children encounter many adventures and mysteries in their neighborhood or at the locations they visit with their grandfather. The majority of the books are set in locations the children are visiting over school holidays such as summer vacation or Christmas break. Only the first 19stories were written by creator Warner. Other books in the series have been written by other writers, but always feature the byline "Created by Gertrude Chandler Warner". While the Alden children age in Warner's books, and remain younger in the ones published after her death, each book is set around its publication date.
Plot summary of the original novel
The original Boxcar Children novel tells a story of four orphaned Alden children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny. Not wishing to live with their hard-hearted grandfather, whom they have never met because of his disapproval of their parents' marriage, the children strike out on their own following their parents' death. On a warm night, the children stop at a bakery to ask for food, where they are invited to stay for the night. However, when they overhear the baker and his wife are planning to keep the three older children as labor and send Benny to an orphanage, the children decide to escape and flee to the woods instead.
There they sleep on some pine needles. But Jessie then sees it is about to rain, and frantically searches for some shelter. At that point, she finds an abandoned boxcar and takes her siblings to it. They all renovate it into their new home. They find useful items such as kitchenware at the junkyard, use a stream for water, and collect blueberries for their meals. They also adopt a stray dog that they name Watch. Realizing they cannot live on water and blueberries, Henry walks to a nearby town called Silver City for work. There he meets a young doctor, Dr. Moore, who hires Henry for odd jobs, often paying him in spare food and clothing as well as money. Suspecting that Henry is not telling the full truth about himself, Dr. Moore follows Henry home in secret and sees the children's living conditions. He decides that they are safe for now and that he should allow Henry to tell the truth when he feels comfortable. Dr. Moore gifts Henry a hammer and Henry also takes a few nails from the doctor. With the tools, he and his siblings create a swimming pool and a dam in the stream. Henry also makes a cart for Benny.
Once, while Henry was working at Dr. Moore's house, Dr. Moore invites Henry to see the Field Day competition. He does not tell Henry that it is conducted by James Henry Alden etc., who is in fact the grandfather of the boxcar children. There, Henry gets to know about a Free-for-all race. Just for enjoyment, he also takes part in it. But then, Henry starts to run in his fastest pace and wins the race. He is awarded a silver cup and 25 dollars by James Henry Alden, his grandfather. But neither of them know that they are a family. Once Henry returns back to his boxcar, his siblings are very glad for him.
At some point, Benny's hair begins to grow, so Jessie cuts it with Violet's scissors. Benny in turn cuts Watch's hair and tries to make a 'J' symbol. This makes Jessie and Violet laugh very hard. However, Violet falls seriously ill. The siblings don't want to go to the hospital because of two reasons:
They would have to tell their full names, and so their grandfather would find them.
They don't have enough money to pay to the hospital. So, as they have no option, Henry runs to Dr. Moore to explain the situation to him. The doctor takes Violet to his own house instead of the hospital, and comforts her. He and Mrs. Moore invite Henry, Jessie and Benny, along with Watch, to stay there as guests.
Meanwhile, the children's grandfather, James Henry Alden, has been offering a reward for news of his missing grandchildren. The doctor connects the missing grandchildren with the ones in his care and goes to speak to Alden, warning him that his grandchildren are afraid of him and encouraging him to befriend the children before revealing who he is. Alden is introduced to the children as a friend of the doctor's. The children find him warm and friendly, so that by the time they learn the truth, they are surprised to learn that he is really their "cruel" grandfather and are more than willing to come live with him.
At their grandfather's house, the children are happy and well-cared for, but speak fondly of their days in the boxcar. They all miss the boxcar too, especially Benny, who wants his cracked, pink cup. So, as a surprise, Mr. Alden arranges to have the boxcar completely restored, repainted, and moved into his backyard where the children can visit it whenever they like. Mr. Alden gets every single piece, even the old, dead stump that the children used to climb inside. At the end of the novel, the children are very glad and make the boxcar their clubhouse and happily live with their grandfather.
Characters
Main characters
(The characters are named here as they are in the revised edition of the original book, and its sequels. The family name in the 1924 original edition is Cordyce rather than Alden.)
Henry James Alden: is the eldest of the Alden children; in most books of the series, Henry is 14 years old (13 in the 1924 edition). He is shown to be calm, hardworking, rational, humble and very protective of his younger siblings. Henry also shows a knack for repairing things and is a natural athlete. In Warner's original books, Henry ages and eventually goes off to college in The Lighthouse Mystery.
Jessie Alden: (Jess in the 1924 original edition) is usually 12 years old and is the older sister. She often acts motherly towards Benny and Violet and even Henry. She is often responsible for cooking. Jessie is described as being very tidy and organized. She is sometimes called Jess, but is mostly referred to as Jessie. She is not afraid of anything, adores the color blue, and is very strong.
Violet Alden: is 10 years old in most of the books. She is the most sensitive of the children and is skillful at painting and sewing. She can frequently win over grouchy characters and is good with animals. Violet is often very shy and loves playing the violin. Her favorite color is violet or purple and she often wears one of those colors. She is the shyest of all the children, and sometimes helps Jessie take care of Benny.
Benjamin "Benny" Alden: is the youngest child at 6 years old (5 in the original 1924 edition). He celebrates his seventh birthday in Surprise Island and continues to age throughout the original series, until he is old enough for a department store job in the last original book, "Benny Uncovers a Mystery." Benny is known for his love of all food and the cracked pink cup he found in the dump. His endearingly childish qualities and comments along with his enthusiasm make him a favorite among young readers. He loves Watch dearly and Benny was the one who named Watch.
Watch: is the dog of the Boxcar children. He acted as a "watchdog" when they lived in the boxcar and protected them. Watch was originally owned by a wealthy lady but ran away and was adopted by the Alden children. The lady was so charmed by the children that she permitted them to keep him. Watch is a Wire Fox Terrier (an Airedale in the 1924 edition), and the children found him while Henry was away at work. He had a thorn in his paw, and Jessie removed it. Because of this, he became known as her dog. In subsequent books, Watch's bed is in Jessie's bedroom.
James Henry Alden: is the wealthy and kind grandfather of the Alden children, allowing them a lot of freedom and always offering them advice. He takes care of the kids after the death of their parents. At first, the kids thought their grandfather was mean, and so they ran away from him, but later on, they realized the goodness of their grandfather and came to live with him. James Henry Alden also organizes the Field Day competitions.
Dr. Moore: (Dr. McAllister in the original 1924 edition) is the man who gave Henry a job and checked Violet when she was ill. He is the very same person who connected Henry, Jessie, Violet, Benny and Watch with their grandfather.
Secondary characters
Mrs. McGregor: The Alden's' housekeeper. Her husband was first seen in the third book of the series.
Mr. McGregor: He mows the lawn and he is Mr. Alden's conductor. He is also married to Mrs. McGregor.
Mike: Mike is Benny's best friend and appeared on Surprise Island.
John Joseph "Joe" Alden and Alice: The children's cousins/aunt and uncle. (Called both, but mostly cousins) Joe was first seen in the second book of the series, Surprise Island. Alice was first introduced in The Yellow House Mystery; she also married Joe in the same book. They moved to a new house in The Mystery of the Singing Ghost. They adopted Soo Lee from Korea.
Aunt Jane and Uncle Andy: The children's great aunt (Grandfather Alden's sister) and her husband. Aunt Jane was once unkind, but was changed in Mystery Ranch, the fourth book of the series.
John Carter: An employee of the children's grandfather. Does investigation and carries out the children's grandfather's wishes "off camera". Has a secret soft-spot for Jessie.
Lars Larson: A fun middle-aged man, a friend of Grandfathers, Lars was first seen in (Blue Bay Mystery)
The film was released by Entertainment One. It had a limited theatrical run in North America, came out on DVD and VOD on August 19, 2014. Streaming and TV rights were sold exclusively to Netflix on October 4, 2014. The film was directed and produced by Daniel Chuba and Mark A.Z. Dippe. The executive producer was Maureen Sargent Gorman.
The sequel film, The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island, was originally planned to be released in the fall 2017. However, Fathom Events released the film in select theaters starting May 8, 2018, followed by a DVD release on August 14, 2018.
After the first novel, the children become amateur sleuths, and the subsequent series involves the children solving various mysteries and occasionally traveling to other locations as they do so. They stumble across a mystery no matter where they are, whether on vacation or in their own backyard. They usually solve the mystery with very little adult intervention, although adults are present in the novel (the author said she wrote about mostly-unsupervised children because that would appeal to children). Some of the mysteries border on the supernatural, although the practical Henry and Jessie always find the sensible reason for anything that appears other-worldly. Most of the mysteries involve thefts and usually involve the Alden children helping someone they know.
The series are divided into mysteries and specials; all of the specials were written after Warner's death. As of 2021[update], there are 159 mysteries and 21 specials in the series.[8] In 2017, the first Boxcar Children miniseries was published (Great Adventure), and since 2021 three more have been written. (Creatures of Legend, Endangered Animals, and Summer of Adventure) In addition, two spin-off series have been released. The first, The Adventures of Benny and Watch was published from 1998-2004, and the second, The Jessie Files, began in 2022.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
In May 2023, original publisher Albert, Whitman and Company sold the rights to the Boxcar Children series to Penguin Random House.[20][21]
Warner's life was chronicled in the biography Gertrude Chandler Warner and the Boxcar Children[22] by Mary Ellen Ellsworth, illustrated by Marie DeJohn, which tells the story of Warner's childhood living across the street from the railroad tracks, her bouts with poor health, her teaching career, her earliest attempts at writing, and her inspiration for The Boxcar Children.[23]
In July 2004, a museum in Putnam, Connecticut, was opened in a red boxcar to honor Gertrude Warner and the Boxcar Children series.[24]
As she wrote the story, Warner read it to her classes and rewrote it many times so the words were easy to understand. Some of her pupils spoke other languages at home and were just learning English, so The Boxcar Children gave them a fun story that was easy to read. Warner once wrote that the original book "raised a storm of protest from librarians who thought the children were having too good a time without any parental control! That is exactly why children like it!"
Anthony Adverse is a 1936 American epic historical drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland. The screenplay by Sheridan Gibney draws elements of its plot from eight of the nine books in Hervey Allen's 1933 historical novel, Anthony Adverse. Abandoned at a convent as an infant, Anthony comes of age in the tumultuous turn of the 18th to the 19th century, the age of Napoleon. The audience is privy to many truths in Anthony's life, including the tragic story of his origins and the fact that the wealthy merchant who adopts him is his grandfather. Most important of all, Anthony believes that his beloved Angela abandoned him without a word, when in fact she left a note telling him that the theatrical troupe was going to Rome. The gust of wind that blows the note away is one of many fateful and fatal events in Anthony's story.
The Famous Five is a series of children's adventure novels and short stories written by English author Enid Blyton. The first book, Five on a Treasure Island, was published in 1942. The novels feature the adventures of a group of young children – Julian, Dick, Anne, George and their dog Timmy.
Jonny Quest is a science fiction-adventure media franchise that revolves around the titular Jonny Quest, a boy who accompanies his scientist father on extraordinary adventures. The franchise started with a 1964–65 television series of the same name, and has come to include two subsequent television series, two television films, and three computer games.
Gertrude Chandler Warner was an American author, mainly of children's stories. She was most famous for writing the original book of The Boxcar Children and for the next 18 books in the series.
The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera and broadcast on Cartoon Network from August 26, 1996, to April 16, 1997. It is a continuation of Jonny Quest (1964) and The New Adventures of Jonny Quest (1986) and features teenage adventurers Jonny Quest, Hadji Singh, and Jessie Bannon as they accompany Dr. Benton Quest and bodyguard Race Bannon to investigate strange phenomena, legends, and mysteries in exotic locales. Action also takes place in the virtual realm of QuestWorld, a three-dimensional cyberspace domain rendered with computer animation. Conceived in the early 1990s, Real Adventures suffered a long and troubled development.
Richard H. Gringhuis was an American artist and illustrator. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he studied from 1939 to 1941 at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, lived in New York for a year, then moved back to Michigan. He wrote and illustrated 28 books, half of them on Michigan history. He also was producer-host for the television series, “Open Door to Michigan.” He served as Curator of Exhibits at the Museum and associate professor in Elementary Education at Michigan State University. He received special awards for his work on Michigan, including the Governor's Award, A National Educational Television Award, and an Award of Merit from the Michigan Historical Society. He was closely associated, as a contract author and artist, with the Mackinac Island State Park system from 1958 until his death. During that time he wrote and illustrated four publications on the Mackinac region, illustrated many others and painted exhibit murals. Having moved to East Lansing in 1952, he painted the Michigan Folklore Mural at the East Lansing Public Library.
David Abraham Adler is an American writer of 265 books for children and young adults, most notably the Cam Jansen mystery series, the "Picture Book of..." series, and several acclaimed works about the Holocaust for young readers.
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment is the first book in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. The book was released in the US on April 11, 2005, and in the UK on July 4, 2005. The story follows the Flock, a group of human-avian hybrids on the run from the scientists who created them.
Jessie Willcox Smith was an American illustrator during the Golden Age of American illustration. She was considered "one of the greatest pure illustrators". A contributor to books and magazines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smith illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included a long-running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all of the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Among the more than 60 books that Smith illustrated were Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.
Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats is a 1988 animated made-for-television film produced by Hanna-Barbera as part of the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 series. The two-hour film was aired in broadcast syndication. The movie's plot is essentially an extended remake of the original show's episodes, "The Missing Heir" and "The Golden Fleecing". In the episode, Top Cat and the gang help a teenager claim her inheritance.
The Just William series is a sequence of thirty-eight books written by English author Richmal Crompton. The books chronicle the adventures of the unruly schoolboy William Brown.
Maximum Ride is a series of young adult science fantasy novels by the author James Patterson. The series centers on the adventures of Maximum "Max" Ride and her family, called the Flock, who are winged human-avian hybrids created at a lab called The School. The series is a reboot of Patterson's earlier novels When the Wind Blows and The Lake House, which were aimed for older audiences.
The Falcon Takes Over, is a 1942 black-and-white mystery film directed by Irving Reis. Although the film features the Falcon and other characters created by Michael Arlen, its plot is taken from the Raymond Chandler novel Farewell, My Lovely, with the Falcon substituting for Chandler's archetypal private eye Philip Marlowe and the setting of New York City replacing Marlowe's Los Angeles beat. The B film was the third, following The Gay Falcon and A Date with the Falcon (1941), to star George Sanders as the character Gay Lawrence, a gentleman detective known by the sobriquet the Falcon.
The Speckled Band is a 1931 British mystery film directed by Jack Raymond and starring Lyn Harding, Raymond Massey and Angela Baddeley. It is an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's original 1892 story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and the 1910 play he adapted from it, The Speckled Band.
Robin Michal Koontz is an American author and illustrator of picture books and early readers for children as well as non-fiction for middle school readers. Her books are published in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Indonesian. Many of her titles have been reviewed in School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and the CLCD.
The Boxcar Children is a 2014 American animated adventure film based on the book of the same name by Gertrude Chandler Warner.
The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island is a 2018 American animated adventure film featuring the voices of Joey King, Talitha Bateman, Griffin Gluck, Carter Sand, Gil Birmingham, Stephen Stanton, Dane DeHaan, J. K. Simmons and Martin Sheen. It is the sequel of the 2014 film The Boxcar Children. The film premiered on May 8, 2018 in theatres.
Dorothy Lake Gregory (1893–1975) was an American artist best known for her work as a printmaker and illustrator of children's books. She took art classes in public school and at the age of fourteen began making drawings for a New York newspaper. She studied art in Paris in her late teens and thereafter took classes at Pratt Institute, the Art Students League of New York, and the Cape Cod School of Art. Her career as a professional artist began with her participation in an exhibition of paintings at the Art Students League in 1918. Her first book illustrations appeared three years later. She first showed prints in an exhibition held in 1935. She continued as artist, illustrator, and printmaker for most of the rest of her life employing throughout a different style for each of the three media. In 1956, a critic contrasted the "cubistic" painting style of that time with the book illustration style for which she was better known, saying he had heard gallery-goers incredulously remark, "But she can't be the same Dorothy Lake Gregory."
The Vanderbeekers is a series of seven middle-grade children's novels written and illustrated by Asian American author Karina Yan Glaser. Set primarily in Harlem, the books follow the adventures of large multiracial family and their friends and neighbors. Although published between 2017 and 2023, reviewers noted that that books evoke older series about large families in urban settings, including Elizabeth Enright's Melendy family books and Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family series, as well as Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks and Gertrude Chandler Warner's original Boxcar Children series. By the time of the final book's release in 2023, the Vanderbeekers books had sold more than half a million copies and been translated into 13 languages.
↑ Chuba, Daniel; Dippé, Mark A. Z.; Jo, Kyungho (2014-12-18), The Boxcar Children (Animation, Adventure, Family), Illeana Douglas, Mackenzie Foy, Zachary Gordon, Joey King, Hammerhead Productions, Warner Bros., retrieved 2021-02-01
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
