It's wild how memorable this one specific thing is. I couldn't really tell you a single thing about this book except for keeping the milk cool in the river.
It's a fuzzy memory, but I remember a situation where a neighbor stole their dog and the kids had to prove it was their dog before the neighbors would give it back. I think one of the girls pointed out a hidden spot between the dogs toes on the paw pad that only she knew about, and the neighbors were like "confound you clever kids, I would've gotten away with it, too..."
So, now I have every little hidden detail about my cats memorized in the event a crazy neighbor steals my babies and I have to prove they are mine on a whim. (They are microchipped, don't worry)
Hey now you might need multiple microchips just in case they steal your cat and the chip lol
(Come on, like this wouldn't be a twist in a modern YA mystery novel)
I've never heard of Trixie Belden, actually! I would have *sworn* the money in the mattress was in a Boxcar Children book, but Googling doesn't bring up any results. This is gonna drive me nuts! I wonder if my brother remembers...
**EDIT:** I FOUND IT!!! It was #11 of the Boxcar Children series!
Now I’m incredibly curious! Am I going to have to reread the boxcar children? Probably!
I highly recommend the Trixie Belden series (with the caveat that I haven’t read them since I was teenager). They were my favorite of the kid detective serials back then
I'm pretty sure it was #11 of the series! They took a train vacation in a caboose that once held a traveling circus, and they find hidden secrets in an old mattress!
Series were all the rage back then, there was Donna Parker, girl reporter, Beverly Gray,The three investigators (Alfred Hitchcock presents), the Bobbsey twins, Nancy drew and Hardy boys, obviously, Tom swift, heck,isaac Asimov even did a sort of lampoon of that genre with Lucky Starr. I'm a bit of a YA enthusiast, a lot of those series were written 'in-house' so there was no one person doing the writing it's why you could get great variance in quality.
For some reason the one where they find a lump of ambergris, and the one that revolved around the fact that the antagonists pants didn't have any mud on them even though he claims encyclopedia brown pushed him down have stuck with me. Getting that sweet scholastic book order and getting it home was a highlight of my childhood
I love Trixie, I was a tomboy and she was WAY better than Nancy drew. She had made it thru three generations - my mom, me, and my oldest child all loved her.
Actually, now that I think about it, I think they had a set of mismatched teacups that they had found in the town dump. One cup for each child. One had a crack, one had a chip, one had a flower design. Maybe the 4th cup was missing all or part of the handle? Jessie lined them all up on a shelf and stepped back to admire how nice the cups looked all together on the shelf after she had washed them.
It's funny what my brain remembers.i have no idea why I remember that particular chapter.
That is the only memory I have as well: the youngest kid wouldn't shut up about his "little pink cup."
To my recollection it went something like this:
Older kid: "We're going to take this train to start over in a new town, it'll be tough at first but we'll make it!"
Youngest kid: "As long as I get to take my little pink cup!"
Older kids: "Hahaha you're so cute Timmy, of course you can bring your little pick cup!"
Youngest kid: "Okay that's swell, I'll go pack up my little pink cup!"
Third grade me: Well this sucks, I'm going to see if there are any Animorph books or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark left on the shelf.
I tried bread in milk.
Turns out it was awful. At least it was awful with white "wonderbread" type bread in milk. The kids were likely using a hardier bread.
Me too! Why is it that we remember this? It's been at least 40 years for me that I've read it and that's literally the only thing I remember about the book. It's weird that it seems kinda universal judging from other responses to your comment.
I also remember that they all got gifts from grandpa(?) or someone else and Violet got a tin cup, which seemed like a bullshit gift compared to the stuff the others got.
I slept in my closet to feel like I was sleeping in a boxcar
Edit: after thinking about the book series I read as a kid, this suddenly brought back the Magic Tree House series in my head. I was all about the boxcar children and magic treehouse when I was little. Then it was Lemony Snicket when I got a little older
I ran away due to the boxcar children, but my great escape into the mountains only lasted like eight hours before my dad found me. My parents then made me sleep outside in the yard to show how ill prepared I was for the venture lmao. (I just took a blanket and some tins of chili)
I didn’t try to live my boxcar children dreams ever again.
I remember vividly reading a boxcar children book in my bed before I was supposed to be picked up by a friend to go to the local planetarium. I had been very excited to go to the planetarium but I was also enthralled by the book and that was my first time ever being "sucked into a book". I did go to the planetarium but the whole time I was looking forward to going back home lol. I was maybe 8 or 9. I don't remember anything about the book though
I remember I wanted to read it after I saw an older kid reading it and when I went to check it out from library I had to get permission from my parents because I was too young. She was in 5th grade and I was in 1st.
I’ve remembered that book fondly for 40 years but only ever read it once.
I was reading the Boxcar children and apparently the Bobbsey Twins in the early 2000s and friggen loved them. Read dozens. Don't remember a thing though.
I only read The Boxcar Children in the summer during the weeks I spent camping because they had a little library at the camp grounds with most of the books. I remember nothing except there was a dog show in one of them
I only remember a part where one of them got a job working in someone’s garden(?) and they asked to take vegetable scraps home “for the chickens” but they were really feeding them to their siblings
Same, also the Hardy Boys and The Great Brain despite being well out of the generation they were initially aimed at though in the same age bracket if that makes sense
I had the same exact deal with the 39 Clues series. IIRC The very first line of the very first book is “Five minutes before her death, Grace Cahill changed her will” and that line freaked me out so bad for some reason that to this day, over a decade later, I still haven’t read those books
After which all the characters' ages were suddenly reverted to what they were in the first book. By the end of the original series, the youngest was approaching his teen years, then when the ghostwriters took over the series, he went back to being 6.
I never really paid attention to ages or minor things like that when I read them. We had a lot of the series way past where she left off. I liked them all.
No. But from what I've seen on Wikipedia, the first book was kind of a pet project for her and then she basically rewrote it in 1942 following some guidelines specifically so that it could be used as a reader in schools and continued the series from there. So technically there wasn't a break in the series since she started over from book 1.
My guess was that mystery novels were popular with kids and the author realized that using characters from an already known IP is easier than coming up with one from scratch.
It's the same MO the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series that were contemporary with the Boxcar Children used. All of the series also had many different authors.
I recently learned that most of the Nancy Drew books were written by the same person, originally. Just under contract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Benson
The old box car is basically a play house in their backyard after the first book, yeah.
That being said I don’t know how long I could have lasted worrying about these homeless children living in an abandoned train carriage.
Lol yes I want a study of those who read it as a kid vs those who do van life/tiny house/off grid living later on. I do think the first book is interesting in that way similar to say van life where it uses the trappings of poverty or things society associates with living desperately (homeless kids and whatnot) but presents in a quaint kind of desirable romantic way
It’s a little odd, but I don’t think that matters so much. I loved those books as a kid and honestly, they just helped me develop a love for reading. Those types of books (Boxcar Children, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc) were really just there to help kids develop reading skills and have a mildly entertaining story in the process. I should probably go back and reread the original, though. It might be a fun trip down memory lane.
Honestly never even knew there were sequels! The original was one of my favorite books as a kid, I still have such vivid images in my head of the creek, where they would keep the milk cold. Strange what sticks in your head!
Ive been meaning to reread the first one as an adult. My teacher read the book to us in third grade, and I moved halfway through the year and never figured out how it ended. From this thread I found out the Grandpa was nice. Great.
I'm not upset at all about spoiling a story I half got through like 30+ years ago. This may not make sense, and I realize the story was fake, but I always hoped it would end well for those kids. Some kind of long lasting youthful magical thinking maybe, not sure.
I spent a long time building dams in creeks. Everytime I'd think about storing some milk there, you know, to keep it cold.
I live in Alaska, and occasionally lose power after a big blizzard. I often keep some fridge stuff cold by plopping it outside in the snow when there’s no power, and whenever I do the image of the boxcar kids putting that milk in the stream always pops into my head.
As I child I never noticed the tonal shift and hadn’t thought about it at all until this post. I remember loving the series along with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I read most of the books more than once but can’t recall the details. Next time I visit my parents I’ll have to look through my collection. All that being said it seems common to rework ideas into something new or popular.
good ol box car children those were some of my first chapter books in first grade and you would have to take the reading test on computers to earn you pizza hut free pizzas but i don't really remember anything about the storylines just that i use to love those books , wonder why they didnt make them into movies
The original was actually very different. The father was an alcoholic. I found it on Project Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42796/pg42796-images.html
After I went to the Wiki and saw that it was shortened/rewritten later, it completely explained this - I did NOT remember that, and when I read through a bunch of these with my kid that tidbit was brand new to me.
I ploughed through the first one and never read the rest because they seemed so different. Yeah that was a weird book. High stakes for a kids book, anxiety inducing with the older siblings having to find sustenance for the younger ones.
I think I maybe at least skimmed a few of the sequels and I remember they kept the boxcar out of nostalgia or something.
In hindsight, those kids had all the PTSD.
Gertrude Warner Chandler was a teacher. She wrote the first book in the 1920s, then re-wrote it in the early 40s with a set vocabulary to use as a reader in school. She didn’t write the sequels until she retired from teaching later in the 40s. She wanted her characters to be independent.
I remember enjoying them in elementary, but our school library didn’t have very many. I appreciate the books she wrote herself(19), as opposed to those written by others to continue the series.
Wow, did not expect to ever come across a BCC series post on here. Haven’t read them in sooo long but recently was at a Barnes and Noble checking the kids section to see if they still shelve those books in case I want to buy some for my soon-to-be-born child to read one day.
It’s been so long since I read them so I don’t think I’d ever noticed the tonal shift, but you’re right. The series easily could just start with Book 2 with them being established as mystery-solving kids. I guess the benefit to using established characters from a standalone book is you don’t need to spend much time explaining who each kids is, what they’re personality is like, etc because we learned all that in Book 1. But yeah, from Book 2 on there’s no need for them to have ever been concerned that their grandfather was a horrible man.
I wish my gen X ass had access to a boxcar with a cold stream running in it. Being outside all damned day would've been alot easier if I could've stayed cool...
I remember liking the first book as a kid and then being really disappointed that the rest of the books aren't them just living their lives in that box car.
I've never really liked the solving mysteries drama and in a similar vein I found an anime I really enjoyed because it focused around apothecary and then half way through I realized I've been tricked into watching a mystery series lol.
I loved them. You will notice that somewhere around book 20, there is another shift where there is suddenly always a “bad guy” in each mystery (the earlier books never had villains). That was when the series was taken over by ghostwriters.
It's funny, as a kid the first Boxcar Children book I read was definitely not the first one in the series. I read most of the series out of order, just grabbing whatever books I could find at my library. Then one birthday I got a boxed set of the first twenty or so books, and read them in order for the first time. I remember being so perplexed by how different the first book was!
My mom loved those books as a kid and introduced them to me as a child too. I loved them, but I also remember rereading the first one sooo many times. I was entranced with the idea of the kids' little boxcar home and how they made do living in the woods on the edge of town. It seemed magical.
Mid-20th century America was a well known crime wasteland. Feckless police not doing their jobs.
That is why the youth had to do their own Policing. Leaders like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and eventually Boxcar Children paved the way for a more decent and kind society.
i LOVED the first book and would make my little siblings play boxcar with me. was also into playing little house in the prairie.
i also loved the mystery books, as i was super big into Nancy Drew. but i did notice the shift as a kid. i still think about it all the time and i’m glad i’m not the only one.
The Overdue podcast does an [episode on the Boxcar Children](https://overduepodcast.com/episodes/2021/9/20/ep-494-the-boxcar-children-by-gertrude-chandler-warner) that addresses the switch (and is hilarious).
Ok this explains why I had this vague conception about the boxcar children solving mysteries but then when I read the first book as a kid it wasn't really about that at all
I loved the boxcar children. To me the first book set the scene for the second and subsequent books to take place. They always showed capable children without adult involvement.
I love stories where children are basically on their own because all the adults in their lives are dead, incompetent, or dangerous. I loved them as a kid and I still do.
Anyone else also remember Dicey’s Song and that series of books? Dicey was a preteen or young teen if I recall correctly, and she had a couple of younger siblings to take care of. They went on a long walk together, hiding from adults and pretending not to be on their own.
Yes! That was homecoming, diceys song was a sequel. Their mom had mental illness and abandoned them. They walked from Rhode Island to the Eastern shore of Maryland where their grandmother lived.
Cynthia voight was the author, I now am tempted to revisit it. I must have read that book 100 times as a kid.
You know the first one was also revised to make it more modern. I think the original was from the 1920s and was revised in the 50s. Mystrey is a huge genre. It was a fun genre, although i only remember the orignial and one when they were on bikes
Yeah I recall loving the first book I'm not being a kid but I love reading about they're just little day-to-day struggles, their life it was really interesting. Then it just kind of became a detective series and I remember I stopped reading it but young me shared your feelings !
I know nothing about them other than my nephew was all about them for a few years. They were his first “chapter books” and he read them like crazy. Reminded me of when I got into *The Hardy Boys*.
Sure, from a craft perspective it's silly, but from a business perspective it makes sense. People like to read books about characters they already know and like, and by authors they already know and like (hence long series with ghostwritten books). Same reason people read fanfiction whose plot and premise have little or nothing to do with the source material.
So if the first Boxcar book was popular, it makes sense to publish sequels to it. But the plot from the first book was already resolved in the first book, so they had to come up with new plots, enough plots to sustain many subsequent sequels, but standalone plots so that the books could be read in different orders, and mysteries are a convenient way to accomplish that. And there was already a history of children's mystery series doing well, like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. So it makes sense that the publisher was like "Let's turn the Boxcar Children into the next Nancy Drew series."
When I was a kid there were TWO houses in my neighborhood and on my street that had full box cars in their backyards
One house was owned by an old lady and she let us look inside once. But it was rotting and falling apart so we weren't allowed to play or look TOO much. A quick in-and-out.
That's all.
No more to the story. Everytime I'd walk by the house walking home from school I'd always think of the Box Car children and how it must have been like living in one of those.
I remember that series, I read a lot of them in the fourth grade. I think it was the first book series I ever read and distinctly remember loving the first book the most.
I don’t know why there was such a huge tonal shift. Did it switch writers at some point?
The box car children is the book series that made me want to learn to read. I liked the story being read by my second grade teacher but in the middle of the book i was taken away for some tutoring. This of course upset me so i tried to check the book out at my school library to just he told my reading score was too low. So i guess i took that personally and read a bunch of books to raise my recorded level so nothing could stop me from reading the series lol.
It’s not a twenty year gap between books one and two. The kids aged a few months between books.
After Gertrude Chandler Warner died, the series had become so popular that they were continued under a ghost writer and released under Gertrude’s name. Thea ghost-written titles reset the timeline and made the youngest character (Benny) into a six year old again.
The Boxcar Children series started out normal with the first book, but then it got into mysteries in the sequels. It's like two different series with the same characters. The first book's about orphans running away and ending up with a nice grandpa. Then suddenly, bam, mysteries everywhere. But as a kid, I didn't care. It was just the Boxcar Children series, you know? The boxcar part doesn't matter after book one.
I remember reading the mystery ones as a kid and having no idea why the children were called the box car children! Like I think they just gave up on even explaining the name after a certain point, too funny
>Ignore the fact that the box car is totally irrelevant past book 1.
Didn't they keep it as a sort of clubhouse? I remember it being mentioned that they went back to hang out sometimes (I think)
I loved the movie for the boxcar children when I was little. I thought of the mystery books as where the movie had been based off of (I never read the original Boxcar children book) kind of the same as the difference between HTTYD's movie adaptations and the book series.
I loved them so much. I owned most of the original author’s ones and still have a few. Sent them to my niece and nephew who were not as excited. I was sad.
I became an avid reader at an extremely young age. My first recollection of reading books was of this whole set. My Mom bought them to read to me, but much to her surprise I taught myself how to read (before we learned how to in school.) It’s what catapulted me into reading series and eventually loving the whole adventure/mystery genre. Oddly I can remember the books vividly and it’s been like 40 years. Oh, nostalgia!
Not sure I recall it being weird though?
I absolutely ate these books up and actually enjoyed the later-era, ghostwritten ones more than the OG's for some reason. I think part of it was preferring the more lighthearted, modern, relevant to little me tone, and the other part was that I just ADORED the kids' interactions with each other, sort of like how people turn on their favorite show just cause they love the characters' voices, you know? There were some solid plot twists too, my mind was blown by how the guy robbing a bank was just a dude attaching metal plates to his truck to make it look like an armored vehicle.
Oh and the one with the geocaching mystery introduced me to my favorite hobby of years and years now.
Oh that’s funny. I totally read the first one in school and never even thought to check if there were more. I had no idea it was a series or that the rest of it was about mystery solving
I remember reading the Boxcar children series as a kid and loved the mystery aspect. But in reading the later books, i don't think i had ever read the first one, so it wasn't until years later when I was reading them with my young niece and nephew that I read that first one and was like woah, this one isn't a mystery!
I loved the boxcar children! I didn't read any of the books in order after the first one because they really didn't need to be read in order. I did find it strange that in one book it obviously took place in the 50s and the next I read was the 90s. So in my mind to make the time jump make sense I made up a back story where they somehow found immortality and eternal youth. So they just fucked around solving mysteries because between their rich grandpa and living forever, they were pretty much set to do whatever they wanted with no financial repercussions.
I never read or heard about the Box Car Children but what you describe is like Enid Blyton's Secret series.
The first book is about a bunch of orphans escaping their evil handlers and going to live by themselves in a small island on a lake, Survival mode.
But in the next books they're facing off criminals and solving mysteries much to the style of other Enid Blyton's franchises with kid detective gangs.
I remember loving them as a kid. When my husband and I read them aloud to our kids a few years ago, we both were definitely weirded out! The kids still liked the books though so it’s probably just the adult perspective looking back and thinking the whole thing is bizarre!
They had pine needles for beds, crockery from the dump, a stream to wash themselves and the crockery, and the oldest one doing odd jobs in a nearby town for the bread and lunch meat and other foods he brought back to feed the others. I think it spoke to me because I often daydreamed of running away.
It was a compelling, interesting and unique setup for stories. Plus... They had the primary requirement for kid detectives, which was at least one deceased parent. Two is a bonus. It gave them the necessary self-sufficiency, freedom and agency to get up to mischief without adult interference. This golden rule has applied to everyone from Nancy Drew to Harry Potter.
I remember learning to read using the Boxcar Children (I eventually bought the entire series at the Scholastic Book Faires.) When I was teaching English in China, I used them to help teach my strudents to read. I looked into it, Gertrude Stein wrote the first one to be exactly that, an easy to read first novel for kids. I do not get the reat. Benny was driving in like the 15th book, then in the reset from the 90s (book 20) he's 6 again!
Yeah, I'm pretty sure except for some of the special location ones (like, I feel like there is one where they are on vacation in Colonial Williamsburg?) the boxcar is pretty prominent. It's a point in each book that Grandfather knows how important it is to them...the tone maybe changed, but isn't the mystery of the first one more of who their grandfather is?
I have no clear memories of the boxcar children, all I know is that I love the boxcar children.
I remember a tea cup. That’s it!
The teacup had a crack in it. I remember that.
I remember they put the milk bottle in the river to keep the milk cool.
River milk was also my favorite part
It's wild how memorable this one specific thing is. I couldn't really tell you a single thing about this book except for keeping the milk cool in the river.
They used sand to scour the dishes clean
And would cook fresh picked hot buttered peas for dinner.
the river milk phenomenon
And collect wild blueberries to eat with bread and milk!
It's a fuzzy memory, but I remember a situation where a neighbor stole their dog and the kids had to prove it was their dog before the neighbors would give it back. I think one of the girls pointed out a hidden spot between the dogs toes on the paw pad that only she knew about, and the neighbors were like "confound you clever kids, I would've gotten away with it, too..." So, now I have every little hidden detail about my cats memorized in the event a crazy neighbor steals my babies and I have to prove they are mine on a whim. (They are microchipped, don't worry)
Hey now you might need multiple microchips just in case they steal your cat and the chip lol (Come on, like this wouldn't be a twist in a modern YA mystery novel)
Memory unlocked!
❤️ you just broke my brain a little with that comment (in a good way)
Same here. Took me back!
I remember them eating blueberries and milk.
Wow. Crazy I remember that too!!!!!! Memory lane forreal
Benny’s pink cup
I remember a mattress with money hidden in it... Don't remember which book it was. I read a lot of them!
Was that Trixie Belden? Another great series
I've never heard of Trixie Belden, actually! I would have *sworn* the money in the mattress was in a Boxcar Children book, but Googling doesn't bring up any results. This is gonna drive me nuts! I wonder if my brother remembers... **EDIT:** I FOUND IT!!! It was #11 of the Boxcar Children series!
Now I’m incredibly curious! Am I going to have to reread the boxcar children? Probably! I highly recommend the Trixie Belden series (with the caveat that I haven’t read them since I was teenager). They were my favorite of the kid detective serials back then
I’m like a hundred years old, so my favorite series of books about a family-of-kids-who-become-detectives was the Happy Hollisters..
I'm pretty sure it was #11 of the series! They took a train vacation in a caboose that once held a traveling circus, and they find hidden secrets in an old mattress!
I jokingly say Tricia was my best friend growing up given how much time i spent reading and rereading those books!
Series were all the rage back then, there was Donna Parker, girl reporter, Beverly Gray,The three investigators (Alfred Hitchcock presents), the Bobbsey twins, Nancy drew and Hardy boys, obviously, Tom swift, heck,isaac Asimov even did a sort of lampoon of that genre with Lucky Starr. I'm a bit of a YA enthusiast, a lot of those series were written 'in-house' so there was no one person doing the writing it's why you could get great variance in quality.
> Bobbsey twins When I was like 11 I decided I was going to name my future baby Flossie after the Bobbsey twin character.
Encyclopedia Brown: wtf bro.
How could I forget.
To be fair though encyclopedia Brown was 20 years later than most of those that I mentioned
Really really entertaining little puzzles.
For some reason the one where they find a lump of ambergris, and the one that revolved around the fact that the antagonists pants didn't have any mud on them even though he claims encyclopedia brown pushed him down have stuck with me. Getting that sweet scholastic book order and getting it home was a highlight of my childhood
I loved the Tom Swift, Jr series - and *The Great Brain* series
I have a couple of my mom’s old Donna Parker books. They are fantastically dated and out of touch and I sort of adore them for it.
They're great, and I wonder if part of it is imagining my mom as a high school student saying things like gosh and gee willikers.
I love Trixie, I was a tomboy and she was WAY better than Nancy drew. She had made it thru three generations - my mom, me, and my oldest child all loved her.
I was a Trixie Belden fan too! She seemed so grown up to me. I recently picked up one of the books, and she looks like such a kid in the pictures.
That was the other train-related book in the series: *Caboose Mystery*.
Yes!! That's the one!
And pine needles to sleep on!
And it was pink.
Why do I remember that detail and only that detail? Odd that I’m not the only one.
Actually, now that I think about it, I think they had a set of mismatched teacups that they had found in the town dump. One cup for each child. One had a crack, one had a chip, one had a flower design. Maybe the 4th cup was missing all or part of the handle? Jessie lined them all up on a shelf and stepped back to admire how nice the cups looked all together on the shelf after she had washed them. It's funny what my brain remembers.i have no idea why I remember that particular chapter.
For me, it's because [this picture exists](https://i.imgur.com/JaFy37K.png).
That is the only memory I have as well: the youngest kid wouldn't shut up about his "little pink cup." To my recollection it went something like this: Older kid: "We're going to take this train to start over in a new town, it'll be tough at first but we'll make it!" Youngest kid: "As long as I get to take my little pink cup!" Older kids: "Hahaha you're so cute Timmy, of course you can bring your little pick cup!" Youngest kid: "Okay that's swell, I'll go pack up my little pink cup!" Third grade me: Well this sucks, I'm going to see if there are any Animorph books or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark left on the shelf.
I remember them making their own swimming spot by damming a creek. That’s about it
I remember there was a boxcar, and some children.
I remember a ladle and learning the color Violet was purple
i remember learning that red glass used to be made with gold
I tried bread in milk. Turns out it was awful. At least it was awful with white "wonderbread" type bread in milk. The kids were likely using a hardier bread.
Me too! Why is it that we remember this? It's been at least 40 years for me that I've read it and that's literally the only thing I remember about the book. It's weird that it seems kinda universal judging from other responses to your comment.
I remember the name...Violet. That's it. I think that was the name of one of the kids. I loved that series when I was a kid, though.
Violet, Jessie, and I think Ben and Henry?
That's Benny to you!
I also remember that they all got gifts from grandpa(?) or someone else and Violet got a tin cup, which seemed like a bullshit gift compared to the stuff the others got.
I slept in my closet to feel like I was sleeping in a boxcar Edit: after thinking about the book series I read as a kid, this suddenly brought back the Magic Tree House series in my head. I was all about the boxcar children and magic treehouse when I was little. Then it was Lemony Snicket when I got a little older
I ran away due to the boxcar children, but my great escape into the mountains only lasted like eight hours before my dad found me. My parents then made me sleep outside in the yard to show how ill prepared I was for the venture lmao. (I just took a blanket and some tins of chili) I didn’t try to live my boxcar children dreams ever again.
We have a nearby park with a passenger train car you can play in, and my mom used to take me and my brother there so we could play Boxcar Children 🤣
I remember vividly reading a boxcar children book in my bed before I was supposed to be picked up by a friend to go to the local planetarium. I had been very excited to go to the planetarium but I was also enthralled by the book and that was my first time ever being "sucked into a book". I did go to the planetarium but the whole time I was looking forward to going back home lol. I was maybe 8 or 9. I don't remember anything about the book though
Same. Homelessness was not as cozy as they made it seem though i do not suggest
I was briefly homeless when I read the first book so I really jibed with it.
I remember them pouring milk over bread in a bowl and calling it breakfast. And little me was like … but soggy bread??!!
It’s hard out here in ~~these streets~~ that boxcar!
I remember I wanted to read it after I saw an older kid reading it and when I went to check it out from library I had to get permission from my parents because I was too young. She was in 5th grade and I was in 1st. I’ve remembered that book fondly for 40 years but only ever read it once.
I was reading the Boxcar children and apparently the Bobbsey Twins in the early 2000s and friggen loved them. Read dozens. Don't remember a thing though.
I think I remember the older boy getting a job as a gardener or something.
I only read The Boxcar Children in the summer during the weeks I spent camping because they had a little library at the camp grounds with most of the books. I remember nothing except there was a dog show in one of them
I only remember a part where one of them got a job working in someone’s garden(?) and they asked to take vegetable scraps home “for the chickens” but they were really feeding them to their siblings
This is exactly how I feel.
I remember the pizza parlor book made pizza seem even more delicious than I, an 8 year old person, already believed it to be.
wait... holy shit... same lol
I just remember them buying a shit ton of milk.
I remember a nice piece of sliced bread? I think? That's all I remember of the series other than I love it of course.
I remember they ate bread, butter, and milk in the first book (which I thought was the perfect diet at the time)
I devoured the Boxcar Children books!
I remember wanting to live in a boathouse bc of that one book
I know I read the first one and then I remember reading one where a pool gets dyed purple.
Same, also the Hardy Boys and The Great Brain despite being well out of the generation they were initially aimed at though in the same age bracket if that makes sense
I remember something to do with I think a snowman building contest
I remember they were feeding birds and the oldest kid accidentally threw the boat key into the water.
My fantasies of setting up my own house as a child came from there lol. I remember taking over the garage as my “boxcar”.
I started sleeping in the closet!
I always loved the mysteries. Fun fact, the author was my great great great aunt (give or take a great) and she only wrote the first 19 books.
9 year old me was afraid to look at the last page of those books, where her bio was, because it mentioned her death and death terrified me.
So how ya doin now?
Went through a goth phase in my teens. Doing much better 👻
I had the same exact deal with the 39 Clues series. IIRC The very first line of the very first book is “Five minutes before her death, Grace Cahill changed her will” and that line freaked me out so bad for some reason that to this day, over a decade later, I still haven’t read those books
That's a very cool fact
And those were the only ones that were good! Absolutely wonderful.
After which all the characters' ages were suddenly reverted to what they were in the first book. By the end of the original series, the youngest was approaching his teen years, then when the ghostwriters took over the series, he went back to being 6.
I never really paid attention to ages or minor things like that when I read them. We had a lot of the series way past where she left off. I liked them all.
Do you know why she took so long between the first and second books?
No. But from what I've seen on Wikipedia, the first book was kind of a pet project for her and then she basically rewrote it in 1942 following some guidelines specifically so that it could be used as a reader in schools and continued the series from there. So technically there wasn't a break in the series since she started over from book 1.
My guess was that mystery novels were popular with kids and the author realized that using characters from an already known IP is easier than coming up with one from scratch.
It's the same MO the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series that were contemporary with the Boxcar Children used. All of the series also had many different authors.
I recently learned that most of the Nancy Drew books were written by the same person, originally. Just under contract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Benson
That was the pilot
A boxcar is part of a train, those are driven by *engineers*, not pilots
*Daaaaaad…*
See also: Early installment weirdness.
The old box car is basically a play house in their backyard after the first book, yeah. That being said I don’t know how long I could have lasted worrying about these homeless children living in an abandoned train carriage.
I blame The Boxcar Children for my romantic notion of van life/tiny house living. 😆
Lol yes I want a study of those who read it as a kid vs those who do van life/tiny house/off grid living later on. I do think the first book is interesting in that way similar to say van life where it uses the trappings of poverty or things society associates with living desperately (homeless kids and whatnot) but presents in a quaint kind of desirable romantic way
My side of the mountain too
Hatchet too
That was my favorite! I wanted a falcon so bad.
i still want to live in a giant hollowed out tree with my pet falcon.
I remember being fascinated how they made a shelf!
Is that where it comes from?!?! Damn I just learned something about myself.
It’s a little odd, but I don’t think that matters so much. I loved those books as a kid and honestly, they just helped me develop a love for reading. Those types of books (Boxcar Children, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc) were really just there to help kids develop reading skills and have a mildly entertaining story in the process. I should probably go back and reread the original, though. It might be a fun trip down memory lane.
The magic treehouse!!
Honestly never even knew there were sequels! The original was one of my favorite books as a kid, I still have such vivid images in my head of the creek, where they would keep the milk cold. Strange what sticks in your head!
I still think about the pine needle beds, the homemade shelves, and the cracked pink cup.
Wow, I wouldnt have recalled those details on my own but you brought me right back to my own mental image of the box car!
Eating bread in milk, that's my go to.
And keeping their milk in the stream I think as a sort of refrigerator? I loved those books when I was a kid.
The milk storage has always stuck with me too! It was described so vividly I never forgot how the box car children kept their milk cold!
The milk storage is literally the one thing I can clearly recall from this book too!
And you can go to the dump to get dishes.
My most vivid memory of the series is fantasizing as a child about how delicious their meals of bread and cold milk would taste!
Rolling pie dough with a glass bottle! (Who bakes pies while hiding out in an empty train car, lol)
Jessie, that’s who. I’m a 40-something SAHM and I *dream* of being as good a homemaker as 12 year old Jessie in a freaking boxcar.
Ive been meaning to reread the first one as an adult. My teacher read the book to us in third grade, and I moved halfway through the year and never figured out how it ended. From this thread I found out the Grandpa was nice. Great. I'm not upset at all about spoiling a story I half got through like 30+ years ago. This may not make sense, and I realize the story was fake, but I always hoped it would end well for those kids. Some kind of long lasting youthful magical thinking maybe, not sure. I spent a long time building dams in creeks. Everytime I'd think about storing some milk there, you know, to keep it cold.
Yeah I remember the milk too. Ironically I remember it more than the eponymous boxcar, and I love trains.
I live in Alaska, and occasionally lose power after a big blizzard. I often keep some fridge stuff cold by plopping it outside in the snow when there’s no power, and whenever I do the image of the boxcar kids putting that milk in the stream always pops into my head.
As I child I never noticed the tonal shift and hadn’t thought about it at all until this post. I remember loving the series along with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I read most of the books more than once but can’t recall the details. Next time I visit my parents I’ll have to look through my collection. All that being said it seems common to rework ideas into something new or popular.
The original was edited later on to be more kid friendly, which may be why you didn't notice the tonal shift.
good ol box car children those were some of my first chapter books in first grade and you would have to take the reading test on computers to earn you pizza hut free pizzas but i don't really remember anything about the storylines just that i use to love those books , wonder why they didnt make them into movies
Book-It!
Yeah, it started as an original idea, but ended up being Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys commercial fiction.
Thanks I was trying to remember the name the Hardy Boys
The original was actually very different. The father was an alcoholic. I found it on Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42796/pg42796-images.html
After I went to the Wiki and saw that it was shortened/rewritten later, it completely explained this - I did NOT remember that, and when I read through a bunch of these with my kid that tidbit was brand new to me.
I ploughed through the first one and never read the rest because they seemed so different. Yeah that was a weird book. High stakes for a kids book, anxiety inducing with the older siblings having to find sustenance for the younger ones. I think I maybe at least skimmed a few of the sequels and I remember they kept the boxcar out of nostalgia or something. In hindsight, those kids had all the PTSD.
Gertrude Warner Chandler was a teacher. She wrote the first book in the 1920s, then re-wrote it in the early 40s with a set vocabulary to use as a reader in school. She didn’t write the sequels until she retired from teaching later in the 40s. She wanted her characters to be independent. I remember enjoying them in elementary, but our school library didn’t have very many. I appreciate the books she wrote herself(19), as opposed to those written by others to continue the series.
Wow, did not expect to ever come across a BCC series post on here. Haven’t read them in sooo long but recently was at a Barnes and Noble checking the kids section to see if they still shelve those books in case I want to buy some for my soon-to-be-born child to read one day. It’s been so long since I read them so I don’t think I’d ever noticed the tonal shift, but you’re right. The series easily could just start with Book 2 with them being established as mystery-solving kids. I guess the benefit to using established characters from a standalone book is you don’t need to spend much time explaining who each kids is, what they’re personality is like, etc because we learned all that in Book 1. But yeah, from Book 2 on there’s no need for them to have ever been concerned that their grandfather was a horrible man.
I wish my gen X ass had access to a boxcar with a cold stream running in it. Being outside all damned day would've been alot easier if I could've stayed cool...
*I loved the first book, and I agree with you.*
I remember liking the first book as a kid and then being really disappointed that the rest of the books aren't them just living their lives in that box car. I've never really liked the solving mysteries drama and in a similar vein I found an anime I really enjoyed because it focused around apothecary and then half way through I realized I've been tricked into watching a mystery series lol.
I loved them. You will notice that somewhere around book 20, there is another shift where there is suddenly always a “bad guy” in each mystery (the earlier books never had villains). That was when the series was taken over by ghostwriters.
1920's Box Car Children - off grid, tiny house, teamwork and community involved - we've come full circle. I loved the series when I was a child.
It's funny, as a kid the first Boxcar Children book I read was definitely not the first one in the series. I read most of the series out of order, just grabbing whatever books I could find at my library. Then one birthday I got a boxed set of the first twenty or so books, and read them in order for the first time. I remember being so perplexed by how different the first book was!
My mom loved those books as a kid and introduced them to me as a child too. I loved them, but I also remember rereading the first one sooo many times. I was entranced with the idea of the kids' little boxcar home and how they made do living in the woods on the edge of town. It seemed magical.
Mid-20th century America was a well known crime wasteland. Feckless police not doing their jobs. That is why the youth had to do their own Policing. Leaders like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and eventually Boxcar Children paved the way for a more decent and kind society.
i LOVED the first book and would make my little siblings play boxcar with me. was also into playing little house in the prairie. i also loved the mystery books, as i was super big into Nancy Drew. but i did notice the shift as a kid. i still think about it all the time and i’m glad i’m not the only one.
Why did I think this series was about mystery-solving homeless kids
I mean, they were homeless in the first book, then solved mysteries in the rest so you're really not far off.
I still want to get a cracked pink cup tattoo
SAME
Ha you’re right, I never thought about it at all. I read a lot of them but really the first one is the only book I remember, too
I still am not over how that ate bread and milk like cereal
The Overdue podcast does an [episode on the Boxcar Children](https://overduepodcast.com/episodes/2021/9/20/ep-494-the-boxcar-children-by-gertrude-chandler-warner) that addresses the switch (and is hilarious).
Ok this explains why I had this vague conception about the boxcar children solving mysteries but then when I read the first book as a kid it wasn't really about that at all
I loved the boxcar children. To me the first book set the scene for the second and subsequent books to take place. They always showed capable children without adult involvement.
If you think that’s bad, you should check out what happens in the Tarzan sequels
I love stories where children are basically on their own because all the adults in their lives are dead, incompetent, or dangerous. I loved them as a kid and I still do. Anyone else also remember Dicey’s Song and that series of books? Dicey was a preteen or young teen if I recall correctly, and she had a couple of younger siblings to take care of. They went on a long walk together, hiding from adults and pretending not to be on their own.
Yes! That was homecoming, diceys song was a sequel. Their mom had mental illness and abandoned them. They walked from Rhode Island to the Eastern shore of Maryland where their grandmother lived. Cynthia voight was the author, I now am tempted to revisit it. I must have read that book 100 times as a kid.
You know the first one was also revised to make it more modern. I think the original was from the 1920s and was revised in the 50s. Mystrey is a huge genre. It was a fun genre, although i only remember the orignial and one when they were on bikes
Came here to say this! It was revised to swap the oldest child, so Henry became the oldest instead of Jessie.
Yeah I recall loving the first book I'm not being a kid but I love reading about they're just little day-to-day struggles, their life it was really interesting. Then it just kind of became a detective series and I remember I stopped reading it but young me shared your feelings !
I know nothing about them other than my nephew was all about them for a few years. They were his first “chapter books” and he read them like crazy. Reminded me of when I got into *The Hardy Boys*.
Sure, from a craft perspective it's silly, but from a business perspective it makes sense. People like to read books about characters they already know and like, and by authors they already know and like (hence long series with ghostwritten books). Same reason people read fanfiction whose plot and premise have little or nothing to do with the source material. So if the first Boxcar book was popular, it makes sense to publish sequels to it. But the plot from the first book was already resolved in the first book, so they had to come up with new plots, enough plots to sustain many subsequent sequels, but standalone plots so that the books could be read in different orders, and mysteries are a convenient way to accomplish that. And there was already a history of children's mystery series doing well, like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. So it makes sense that the publisher was like "Let's turn the Boxcar Children into the next Nancy Drew series."
I thought that was so weird when I was a kid.
I guess children mystery novels were pretty big at the time.
welcome to the bizarre times of the Hardy boys, Tom Swift, Tom Swift Jr, and Nancy Drew.
The Bobbsey Twins and the Dana sisters too.
When I was a kid there were TWO houses in my neighborhood and on my street that had full box cars in their backyards One house was owned by an old lady and she let us look inside once. But it was rotting and falling apart so we weren't allowed to play or look TOO much. A quick in-and-out. That's all. No more to the story. Everytime I'd walk by the house walking home from school I'd always think of the Box Car children and how it must have been like living in one of those.
Now that I’m a mom I side eye Grandfather. He didn’t have a relationship with his grandkids because he “didn’t like” their mother?
I remember that series, I read a lot of them in the fourth grade. I think it was the first book series I ever read and distinctly remember loving the first book the most. I don’t know why there was such a huge tonal shift. Did it switch writers at some point?
The box car children is the book series that made me want to learn to read. I liked the story being read by my second grade teacher but in the middle of the book i was taken away for some tutoring. This of course upset me so i tried to check the book out at my school library to just he told my reading score was too low. So i guess i took that personally and read a bunch of books to raise my recorded level so nothing could stop me from reading the series lol.
I loved all the campfire meal descriptions. Loved some boxcar adventures
It’s not a twenty year gap between books one and two. The kids aged a few months between books. After Gertrude Chandler Warner died, the series had become so popular that they were continued under a ghost writer and released under Gertrude’s name. Thea ghost-written titles reset the timeline and made the youngest character (Benny) into a six year old again.
The Boxcar Children series started out normal with the first book, but then it got into mysteries in the sequels. It's like two different series with the same characters. The first book's about orphans running away and ending up with a nice grandpa. Then suddenly, bam, mysteries everywhere. But as a kid, I didn't care. It was just the Boxcar Children series, you know? The boxcar part doesn't matter after book one.
I remember reading the mystery ones as a kid and having no idea why the children were called the box car children! Like I think they just gave up on even explaining the name after a certain point, too funny
>Ignore the fact that the box car is totally irrelevant past book 1. Didn't they keep it as a sort of clubhouse? I remember it being mentioned that they went back to hang out sometimes (I think)
I loved the movie for the boxcar children when I was little. I thought of the mystery books as where the movie had been based off of (I never read the original Boxcar children book) kind of the same as the difference between HTTYD's movie adaptations and the book series.
I loved them so much. I owned most of the original author’s ones and still have a few. Sent them to my niece and nephew who were not as excited. I was sad.
I became an avid reader at an extremely young age. My first recollection of reading books was of this whole set. My Mom bought them to read to me, but much to her surprise I taught myself how to read (before we learned how to in school.) It’s what catapulted me into reading series and eventually loving the whole adventure/mystery genre. Oddly I can remember the books vividly and it’s been like 40 years. Oh, nostalgia! Not sure I recall it being weird though?
I absolutely ate these books up and actually enjoyed the later-era, ghostwritten ones more than the OG's for some reason. I think part of it was preferring the more lighthearted, modern, relevant to little me tone, and the other part was that I just ADORED the kids' interactions with each other, sort of like how people turn on their favorite show just cause they love the characters' voices, you know? There were some solid plot twists too, my mind was blown by how the guy robbing a bank was just a dude attaching metal plates to his truck to make it look like an armored vehicle. Oh and the one with the geocaching mystery introduced me to my favorite hobby of years and years now.
I was a huge fan of those as a kid, and did find it odd. But never really questioned it.
Oh that’s funny. I totally read the first one in school and never even thought to check if there were more. I had no idea it was a series or that the rest of it was about mystery solving
I remember reading the Boxcar children series as a kid and loved the mystery aspect. But in reading the later books, i don't think i had ever read the first one, so it wasn't until years later when I was reading them with my young niece and nephew that I read that first one and was like woah, this one isn't a mystery!
Well this post has brought back memories and now I must excuse myself. I have a box of kids chapter books to locate...
I loved those books, along with Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys. Feel free to drop book suggestions for adult versions of mysteries. 🙂
I loved the boxcar children! I didn't read any of the books in order after the first one because they really didn't need to be read in order. I did find it strange that in one book it obviously took place in the 50s and the next I read was the 90s. So in my mind to make the time jump make sense I made up a back story where they somehow found immortality and eternal youth. So they just fucked around solving mysteries because between their rich grandpa and living forever, they were pretty much set to do whatever they wanted with no financial repercussions.
I never read or heard about the Box Car Children but what you describe is like Enid Blyton's Secret series. The first book is about a bunch of orphans escaping their evil handlers and going to live by themselves in a small island on a lake, Survival mode. But in the next books they're facing off criminals and solving mysteries much to the style of other Enid Blyton's franchises with kid detective gangs.
I loved the first book and hated all the others
I remember loving them as a kid. When my husband and I read them aloud to our kids a few years ago, we both were definitely weirded out! The kids still liked the books though so it’s probably just the adult perspective looking back and thinking the whole thing is bizarre!
Wow I read these and loved them as a kid and have no memory of that first one! I am going to have to re-read! Thanks for the inspo!
They should release another series where they're now Boxcar Adults
They had pine needles for beds, crockery from the dump, a stream to wash themselves and the crockery, and the oldest one doing odd jobs in a nearby town for the bread and lunch meat and other foods he brought back to feed the others. I think it spoke to me because I often daydreamed of running away.
It was a compelling, interesting and unique setup for stories. Plus... They had the primary requirement for kid detectives, which was at least one deceased parent. Two is a bonus. It gave them the necessary self-sufficiency, freedom and agency to get up to mischief without adult interference. This golden rule has applied to everyone from Nancy Drew to Harry Potter.
I remember learning to read using the Boxcar Children (I eventually bought the entire series at the Scholastic Book Faires.) When I was teaching English in China, I used them to help teach my strudents to read. I looked into it, Gertrude Stein wrote the first one to be exactly that, an easy to read first novel for kids. I do not get the reat. Benny was driving in like the 15th book, then in the reset from the 90s (book 20) he's 6 again!
I absolutely loved that book series.
Every time I bring this series up, my friends don't know what I'm talking about. I was starting to think I hallucinated these books.
I remember that book. The fridge in the creek part.
I also always found it peculiar that they never went back to the boxcar after the first book. It's like everybody just kind of forgot about it.
they do though, their grandfather brings the boxcar to his house as a gesture of kindness and that's where the kids sleep/hang out
Yeah, I'm pretty sure except for some of the special location ones (like, I feel like there is one where they are on vacation in Colonial Williamsburg?) the boxcar is pretty prominent. It's a point in each book that Grandfather knows how important it is to them...the tone maybe changed, but isn't the mystery of the first one more of who their grandfather is?
If I remember right, they almost always start and or end the story talking in the boxcar.