The Boxcar Children

Summary

The Boxcar Children follows four orphaned brothers and sisters: Henry, fourteen; Jessie, twelve; Violet, ten; and Benny, six. After their parents die, the children set out on their own rather than go to their grandfather, whom they have never met and believe to be a hard man who disliked their mother. On their first evening they stop at a bakery to buy bread, and the baker's wife lets them sleep in the shop. In the night Henry and Jessie overhear her plan to keep the three older children to work for her and to send little Benny to a children's home. They slip away before dawn, walk by night, and sleep in a haystack. When a thunderstorm threatens, they find an old abandoned boxcar standing on a stretch of track in the woods and take shelter inside. The boxcar becomes their home. Jessie, the careful planner, keeps house and manages the money. A stray dog limps up with a thorn in its paw; Jessie pulls it out, and the dog, whom they name Watch, guards them from then on. At a dump near the woods the children find dishes, a kettle, spoons, and a cracked pink cup that Benny treasures above everything. They keep milk cool in the stream, build a dam of stones to make a swimming pool, and turn a little food into hearty meals. Henry walks to the nearby town of Silver City to earn money and is hired by a young doctor, Dr. Moore, to mow grass and do odd jobs; later all the children help pick cherries at the doctor's house. Dr. Moore invites Henry to a Field Day, where Henry enters a free-for-all race, runs his fastest, and wins a silver cup and twenty-five dollars from the man who sponsors the games, James Henry Alden. Neither knows that the other is family. Then Violet falls ill with a fever. Henry runs for Dr. Moore, who drives to the woods and takes all four children to his own house to nurse Violet. The doctor has seen Mr. Alden's notice asking for news of his missing grandchildren, and Mr. Alden comes to know the children at the doctor's house before they learn who he is. Finding him kind rather than cruel, they go to live with him in his large house in Greenfield, and as a surprise he has the boxcar brought there and set in his garden so that they can keep it. Warner, a first-grade teacher in Putnam, Connecticut, first published the story with Rand McNally in 1924 as The Box-Car Children. She revised it in a shorter form for Albert Whitman in 1942, with illustrations by L. Kate Deal, and that version began one of the longest-running series in American children's books.

Top Lessons

• A family that refuses to be split up

  The children run from the bakery because the baker's wife would send Benny away from the others. Everything they do in the woods, from Henry's jobs to Jessie's careful housekeeping, serves the single aim of staying together.

• Making much out of little

  The Aldens furnish a home from a dump, cook meals from small purchases, and make a swimming pool from stones and a brook. The book delights in thrift and handiwork and makes ordinary chores feel like an adventure.

• Fearing the wrong person

  The children hide from their grandfather because they have heard he is unkind, but he turns out to be generous and loving. Warner shows how a fear built on hearsay can keep children from the help they most need.

• Honest work

  Henry earns the family's money by mowing, cleaning, and picking cherries for Dr. Moore, and he wins his race fairly. The children never steal or beg; they work and save.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The book's only medical episode is Violet's fever, which the children cannot manage alone and which brings them under the care of Dr. Moore. The young country doctor is drawn as employer, nurse and friend at once, taking a sick child into his own house, a picture of general practice before antibiotics were common. The illness is not named and is resolved quickly; its role is to end the children's independence and lead them to their grandfather.

• Chapters 11-12

  Violet falls ill in the boxcar; Henry runs for Dr. Moore, who takes the children to his own house and nurses her back to health.