About This Pathfinder
This website is a collection of resources meant to both encourage
children who do not yet enjoy reading to pick up the Boxcar Children
Books, or any other of the books mentioned on this page, as well as to
help children who already know and love the Boxcar Children Series to
find further information on the series, the author, the setting, trains in
general, and other mysteries. This website can also be a starting point
for children who want to write book reports on any of the Boxcar
Children books, or for teachers, parents, or librarians who serve
children that are currently or may be in the future particularly
interested in these books. I selected the resources in the pathfinder
and designed the layout for children in grades 2-5, because I think
that those age-levels are the most likely to be reading, enjoying, and
doing further research about these books.
A pathfinder about these books is necessary; I was unable to
find any similar resources on the internet, and though there are some
websites that list other books for children who enjoy the Boxcar
Children books, there was nothing that had more complete information
about the books, the author, and the setting. The Boxcar Children
books have been very popular and widely read for decades, and many
children have loved the books and the characters. Children who really
enjoy a book series tend to read everything in that series, but when
they’ve read all the books, or all the books in the series that they are
interested to read, then they may not know where to look for other
books. Or, because the Boxcar Children books are not clear about the
time period and geographical setting, children who want to do school
assignments on the books may find themselves stumped. This
pathfinder ought to begin to remedy those problems.
It was not easy to locate the resources in this pathfinder. There
are many topics to be covered, and to prevent the pathfinder from
being overwhelmingly long, I attempted to select only the very best
resources on each topic. The databases that I selected are ones that I
have found very useful in the past and that had reliable information on
the applicable topics. For websites, I used search engines, other
websites that acted as pathfinders and had long lists of links on select
topics, and I created one very long list of links that I considered using
in this pathfinder. I chose only the ones that appear here based on
reliability of data—whether I felt I could trust the website and the
information within, age-appropriateness—would children in grades 2-5
be able to use these websites and find them entertaining?--, and
amount of information—does the website have enough information or
does it have so much as to be overwhelming? The final criteria I used
to select or dismiss a resource was advertising; if there were a lot of
pop-up ads, or a lot of banner ads, or a lot of “sponsored links,” it
caused me to question the reliability of the resource, and it also made
the resource less useable.
If you want to find more information after using the resources in
this pathfinder, you can use the following terms in search engines:
“Boxcar Children”
“Gertrude
Chandler Warner”
“Railroads” or a
combination of
“Railroads” and
“history”
“1940s” or
“World War II”
“child detectives”
or “mystery
books” or any
combination
“New England” or
a combination of
“New England”
and “history”
You could also try
searching for any
of the New
England states
“Orphans” or
“orphan trains”
or “orphanages”
This pathfinder is organized into several sections; you can tell
when once section ends and another begins because there will be a
picture of a
red boxcar against a yellow background separating them. The first
section is this “About the Pathfinder” section that you’re reading now.
The second section lists and shows the covers of several of the Boxcar
Children books. The third section lists places you can go to look for
more information about the Boxcar Children books. The fourth section
tells you where you can go to find more information about the creator
and writer of the Boxcar Children. The fifth section tells you where to
look for information about the 1940s, which is the period during which
the first Boxcar Children books were written, and during which many
of the books take place. The sixth section tells you about New
England, which is where the Aldens lived. The seventh section tells
you where to go to find out about orphans and orphanages, since the
Alden children’s parents died. The eighth section will give you a list of
places to look for information about trains and railroads. The ninth
section will tell you where to find information about mystery stories
and about some other mystery series involving children and young
adults. The tenth, and final, section will give you, your parents, and
your teachers some ideas about how to use the information in this
pathfinder.
Books of the Boxcar Children
These are just a few of the Boxcar Children books that are out
there for you to read. I’ve listed the first five Boxcar Children
Mysteries, only the first three Boxcar Children Specials, and only the
first Adventures of Benny and Watch book. These are just to get you
started; below these, I’ve listed a couple of places where you can go to
find every book in the series.
Mysteries
#1 – The Boxcar Children,
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
#2 – Surprise Island, by
Gertrude Chandler Warner
#3 -- The Yellow House Mystery,
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Gertrude Chandler Warner
#4 – Mystery Ranch, by
#5 – Mike’s Mystery, by
Gertrude Chandler Warner
Specials
#1 Boxcar Children Special -- The
Mystery on the Ice, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
#2 Boxcar Children Special – The
Mystery in Washington D.C., by Gertrude Candler Warner
#3 Boxcar Children Special – The
Mystery at Snowflake Inn, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
The Adventures of Benny and Watch
These books are written for younger children, or older children
who don’t read so well. If you aren’t ready for chapter books like The
Boxcar Children Mysteries yet, you can still get to know the Alden
family through this series.
#1 Adventures of Benny and Watch –
Meet the Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Extra-Special Books and Accessories
The 60th Anniversary edition of the
first Boxcar Children book, The
Boxcar Children, by Gertrude
Chandler
Warner
Diane Blaine & L. Kate Deal
The Boxcar Children Cookbook, by
The Boxcar Children Bookcase.
This bookcase is made of cardboard, shaped like a boxcar,
and can hold 30
of your favorite Boxcar Children
Books!
About the Boxcar Children
Books
The first Boxcar Children book, The Boxcar Children, was written by
Gertrude Chandler Warner and published in 1942. It is the story of
four siblings, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden; the Alden
children’s parents have died, and they are faced with going to live with
their grandfather, who they believe to be a cruel man. The children
run away and set up house in an abandoned boxcar. Eventually, they
are found by their grandfather, who it turns out they were very wrong
about, and is actually a kind man who loves them very much. The
other books in the series are about mysteries that the Alden children
help to solve. The series is written for children in grades two through
four, but older children can also enjoy these books. While Gertrude
Chandler Warner wrote only the first 19 books in the Boxcar Children
mysteries, there are 113 books total in the series, 22 “Specials,” and
12 books in the Benny and Watch series, which are written for
younger, beginning readers.
http://www.awhitmanco.com/ -- This is the website of the
company that publishes The Boxcar Children. It lists all of the
books in the Boxcar Children Series, shows you the covers of all
of those books, and tells you what they're about.
http://www.bookpage.com/9705bp/childrens/theboxcarchildren.
html -- This webpage has a short history of the Boxcar Children
Series. It talks about why the author wrote the book, what
people thought of it when it was first published, and what the
books are about.
http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/childrens/serieslistTZ.html – This
website tells you the order of books in different series, arranged
by the author’s last name. You can use it to find series lists of
all kinds of books for kids! If you choose the w’s, then go down
to “Warner, Gertrude Chandler,” you’ll find the names of all of
the Boxcar Children books. First it tells you the titles of the
original 19 books, which were written by Gertrude Chandler
Warner, then it tells you all of the more Boxcar Children Series
books that were written by other people more recently. Under
that, it lists the titles of the Boxcar Children Specials, which are
books about the Boxcar Children, but that don’t have a special
spot in the series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boxcar_Children -- This is the
Wikipedia page for The Boxcar Children. It tells you what the
first book is about and who the characters are. Then it talks a
little bit about the people who wrote the books, and it gives you
a list of the books in the series.
http://www.oasisaudio.com/ – If you like to listen to books on
CD, or you like the Boxcar Children so much that you want to be
able to listen to them when your eyes are busy looking at other
things, you can check out this website, which is the page of a
company that makes audiobooks. If you type “Boxcar Children”
into the search bar, you can look at all of the Boxcar Children
books that have been made into CDs.
http://www.expotv.com/ -- This website lets people tape videos
of themselves talking about things they buy, then put them up
on the site. If you type “Boxcar Children” into the search bar,
you’ll find lots of videos that one man has made reviewing the
Boxcar Children books. He gives much of the same information
for each book, but he shows you the cover, some of the pictures
inside, and he seems to really enjoy all of the books.
http://www.expotv.com/videos/reviews/4/52/TheDeserted-Library-Mystery-Boxcar-Chi/94109 - This video is a review of
“The Deserted
Library Mystery.”
http://www.expotv.com/videos/reviews/4/55/MysteryRanch-Boxcar-Children/97590 - This video is a review of “Mystery
Ranch.”
About the Author: Gertrude
Chandler Warner
http://www.kidsreads.com/series/series-boxcar-author.asp This site has a picture and lots of great information about
Gertrude Chandler Warner, the creator of the Boxcar Children
and the writer of the first 19 Boxcar Children books.
Biography Resource Center -- To use this website, you have to
go to the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library webpage
(http://www.imcpl.org) and select iLibrary Online Databases
from the lefthand side. Then select to sort the resources
alphabetically, and scroll down until you get to this one. You’ll
have to type your library card number into the page that comes
up after you click on this resource, and when you hit submit, the
webpage will take you right to this database. This is a database
that takes entries from many different reference sources—like
encyclopedias—and puts them all in one place. If you type
“Gertrude Chandler Warner” into the search bar and check the
“name contains” box, you get three results about her from
different reference books, all with a lot of interesting and useful
information.
Gertrude Chandler Warner and the
Boxcar Children, by Mary Ellen Ellsworth.
--This book is a biography of
Gertrude Chandler Warner. It talks
about her entire life, from when
she was a child and lived near a
set of railroad tracks, to when she
died as an old lady. It’s not too
hard to read, since it’s written for
children as young as third-grade,
and it has lots of photographs of
Gertrude Chandler Warner’s life.
About the Time Period:
The 1940s
The Boxcar Children books don’t mention dates in which the
children lived, but since the books are meant to be contemporary
(set in the time period during which they were written), and the
original books were published during the 1940s, we know that the
Aldens lived during the 1940s. Here are some internet resources you
can use to find out more about the 1940s.
History Resource Center:US – To use this website, you have to
go to the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library webpage
(http://www.imcpl.org) and select iLibrary Online Databases
from the lefthand side. Then select to sort the resources
alphabetically, and scroll down until you get to this one. You’ll
have to type your library card number into the page that comes
up after you click on this resource, and when you hit submit, the
webpage will take you right to this database. This is a database
where you can find all different kinds of information about United
States history. You can click the red “Chronology” tab at the top
of the page, then use the arrows to pick either the years “19331941” or “1941-1945”. Then you can pick the events that
happened during those years that sound interesting to you and
read about them.
http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/subjects/ushistory.htm This website can give you a lot of information about the time
that the Boxcar Children lived in. World War II was in the
1940s, so you can pick that from the drop-down menu and read
all about it.
http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade40.html - This website is all
about the 1940s in the United States. It talks about music that
was popular, books that were published, movies that came out,
and the kinds of clothes people wore.
http://www.swansonmedia.com/photos/lightboxes/social/children/1940s1950s/index.html - This website has dozens of photographs of
children from the 1940s and ‘50s. It will show you the kinds of
clothing that children wore and how they did their hair so that
you can better picture what the Alden children might have
looked like.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/presidents/franklindroosevelt.h
tml - This is a page on the official White House website about
Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was the 32nd president of the United
States, and was president from 1933-1945; he was president
when the Boxcar Children was written. This page tells you some
facts about him, and about what life was like when he was
president.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/presidents/harrytruman.html This is another page on the White House website; this one is
about Harry Truman, the 33rd president o the United States, who
was president from 1945—1953. Some of the Boxcar Children
books are set during his presidency! This page has facts about
him and what life was like while he was president.
http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/fdroosevelt
- This is another website about Franklin Roosevelt. This one has
quick facts and more in-depth information about him, as well
files that you can listen to of speeches he gave.
http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/truman This is another website about Harry Truman. This one has
information about him and his presidency as well as sound files
that you can listen to of him giving speeches.
About the Setting: New
England
The books never mention where exactly the Aldens live;
Grandfather Alden’s home is in the town of Greenfield, but the author
doesn’t say which state Greenfield is in, and many U.S. states have a
town or city named Greenfield. However, we do know, from clues in
the books and from the author herself, that the Greenfield that the
Aldens live in is in one of the New England states.
World Geography -- To use this website, you have to go to the
Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library webpage
(http://www.imcpl.org) and select iLibrary Online Databases
from the lefthand side. Then select to sort the resources
alphabetically, and scroll down until you get to this one. You’ll
have to type your library card number into the page that comes
up after you click on this resource, and when you hit submit, the
webpage will take you right to this database. This website can
give you all kinds of facts about anywhere in the world; to find
information about New England, you’ll want to select “United
States” from the “North America” box. Then, you can look
through different subject areas to find information about New
England. You can read about natural resources, the weather,
terrain (what the land is like, hilly, flat, with lots of caves or
mountains, etc.), and a whole lot more. This resource isn’t
going to talk about “New England,” but there will be lots of
information about the “Northeast.” Look for that keyword,
instead.
http://www.kidinfo.com/American_History/Colonization_NE_Colo
nies.html - This website tells you about the history of New
England, way back before the United States even existed, when
England owned the original 13 colonies. You can also find
individual histories of all of the New England states that include
timelines, colleges, flags, and more!
http://www.infoplease.com/states.html - This website has a map
of all of the states in the United States; you can click on any
state to learn all about it. You’ll learn about famous residents of
the states, the rivers in that state, the largest cities, and a whole
lot more.
About Orphans
The Alden children’s parents died before the start of the first
Boxcar Children book, and during most of that book, they didn’t have
any adults looking after them. That means that the Alden children
were orphans, which is a word that means, according to Webster’s
Dictionary, “children that have been deprived of parental care and
have not been adopted.” Here are some places that you can go to
look for more information about orphans, both in the past and today.
http://www.childrensbureau.org/html/History/1934_1961.htm This website tells you about the history of orphanages and
orphans right here in Indianapolis. This website can help you
understand what might have happened to the Alden children if
they hadn’t had a grandfather to care for them, and what
happened to other children who lost their parents during that
time.
http://www.fyi3.com/fostercareFacts/QA.cfm?topicReq=1&questi
onID=6 - Because the United States no longer has orphanages,
children whose parents have died and who have no relatives or
friends to care for them are either adopted right away or enter
the Foster Care System. This page is meant to help children
entering foster care understand what is happening to them; it
can help you understand the fears that today’s orphans feel and
what they experience.
http://www.kckpl.lib.ks.us/ys/books/ORPHANTR.HTM - This is
another library’s website that lists books about the “Orphan
trains” that existed to take orphaned children around the country
in search of families to take care of them. There are true books,
picture books, and chapter books listed, each with a description
of what the book is about.
About Trains
http://www.alleducationalsoftware.com/xs29329.html - Software
concentration with train pictures.
http://www.meddybemps.com/Trains/index.html - This is a fun
website all about trains! There are games you can play, videos
you can watch, and facts about trains and the history of
railroads.
http://sjcpl.lib.in.us/kidsplace/booklists/trains.html - This is
another library’s website that lists story books and true books
about trains that you can look for and check out at your library.
It has pictures of the covers of the books and descriptions that
tell you what the book is about.
http://www.transitpeople.org/lesson/train.htm - This website
gives you a short history of railroads during the first half of the
19th century, and then you can take a quiz to see how much
you’ve learned.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/streamliners/gallery/index.html
- This website tells you about how certain types of trains, called
Steamliners, that were used by Americans during the 1930s.
There is a timeline, pictures, information about real people that
lived during that time, and information (and even a transcript,
which is everything said in the movie, written down) about a
move about these trains.
Other Mysteries
http://imcpl.org/kids/stories/supersleuths.html - This is an
InfoGuide that the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library put
together for kids who like mystery books. It shows the covers
and lists titles of mystery books for kids, and it also links to
some searches in the library catalog for specific mystery series
that you might also enjoy.
http://kids.mysterynet.com/ - This website has a bunch of
different mysteries that you can read and try to solve on your
own. Some of them are even written by mystery loving kids like
you!
http://kids.mysterynet.com/history-kids/ - This is a page
that tells you all about the history of mystery stories.
Encyclopedia Brown, by Donald Sobol
The Encyclopedia Brown books are
a series of mystery stories that
have been written since 1963. The
main character is a very clever boy
named Leroy, who other kids all
call Encyclopedia because of how
smart he is. Encyclopedia’s father
is the chief of police, and
Encyclopedia often helps his father
solve his cases.
A to Z Mysteries, by Ron Roy
The first book in the A to Z
Mysteries, The Absent Author was
published in 1997, and the last of
the 26 books was published in
2005. The three main characters
are nine years old, live in
Connecticut, and solve the
mysteries together.
The Nancy Drew series, by Carolyn Keene
The Nancy Drew mysteries have
been written since the 1930s, and
there are hundreds of Nancy Drew
mysteries now. Nancy Drew is in
college, which makes her older
than any of the characters in the
other mystery series mentioned in
this pathfinder. She has a natural
curiosity, and she often gets drawn
into mysteries that place her in
dangerous situations.
The Bobbsey Twins, by Laura Lee Hope
The first Bobbsey Twins book was
published in 1903, and the 72nd
and last book was published in
1979. There are two sets of twins
in the Bobbsey family; the older
set, Bert and Nan, are twelve years
old, and the younger set, Flossie
and Freddie, are six. The entire
family, including their parents,
become involved in and help to
solve mysteries in this series.
Cam Jansen, by David A. Adler
Cam Jansen is a girl with a
photographic memory—which
means that she remembers
everything she sees, exactly as she
sees it—who, with the help of her
friend Eric, solves mysteries. Cam
is a smart, sassy heroine who sets
her mind to do something and gets
it done.
Two-Minute Mysteries, by Donald J. Sobol
This is a book made up of a lot of
short (1-2 page) mysteries that
give the reader everything he or
she needs to know to solve the
case. The story stops while the
reader tries to work it out; to find
out the solution, you just have to
turn the page.
Write and Draw Your Own Mystery Stories
Pixie 2, by Tech4Learning – This is a software
package created to be easy to use for kids of all ages. You can
use it to draw
your own original artwork or to edit photos
that you already have on your computer.
There are ready-made backgrounds that you
can choose from, or you can draw your own.
You can type in words around your pictures,
you can add stickers to help tell the story, or
you can record your own audio tracks to
accompany your pictures. Using this software,
you can write your own mystery story! It even
has pages set up to help you organize your
thoughts, so that you can make sure your
story makes sense!
Using this Pathfinder
The best way, of course, to use this pathfinder is just for fun or
to pursue a piqued interest. A child who loves the Boxcar Children, or
who read an enjoyed even just the first book, might search for more
information about them and find this pathfinder. He or she might then
be able to find out what the next book in the series they have yet to
read is from the Monroe County Public Library website, they could
further their knowledge about the world the Alden children lived in
from the World Geography database and the Swanson-Media
photographs. They could find more books about orphaned children
from the St. Joseph County Public Library’s booklist, or they could find
other mystery series that they might enjoy just as much from the
Indianapolis Marion County Public Library’s InfoGuide.
Another effective way to use this website would be, for a
teacher, to connect something that children have an emotional tie to
(like the Alden children) with a unit on history or geography. The
teacher could have the children read the first Boxcar Children book,
and then the class could have a discussion about the world that Benny
Alden was growing up in. They could learn about World War II and the
1940s, using the SocialStudiesForKids site and the Kingswood College
website, then look for its effects in the Boxcar Children books, which
don’t really explicitly mention the war. The class could study New
England geography and talk about the kinds of temperatures or terrain
that the Alden children would have faced during their unsupervised
adventures using the World Geography database and the InfoPlease
States site.
Parents could use this pathfinder similarly; if they have a child
who is really into the Boxcar Children, they could use that as a
gateway to get them interested in other topics. If you have a child
who loves the Boxcar Children but won’t sit still to talk about history or
geography, this pathfinder provides a link between those topics; they
may be more palatable to a child if the child sees a connection to
something they love. Talking about the Boxcar Children and
transitioning into talking about the history of the railroad using the
TransitPeople or PBS.org websites would be another way to get
children interested in history.
Teachers or parents could also use the Boxcar Children as an
entry into learning about mysteries in general. Teachers could do an
entire literature unit on mysteries. They could go to the MysteryNet
page to learn about the history of mystery stories, and then they could
either read or talk about the famous mysteries of Edgar Allen Poe, Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, and/or Agatha Christie. They could talk about
different kinds of mystery stories, famous detectives, and other
mystery books starring child detectives, like Encyclopedia Brown and
the Bobbsey Twins. They could even use the MysteryNet page, or the
Sobol’s Two-Minute Mysteries for some fun mystery activities.
You could also use this pathfinder as part of a library promotion
about Mysteries. You could couple this page, highlighting the Boxcar
Children books and the mystery section, with a pathfinder based on an
adult mystery series so as to reach a larger audience. You could
promote the MysteryNet webpage and make displays of the Boxcar
Children alongside the Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, Bobbsey
Twins and Cam Jansen books. You could have a program where you
talked about some of the more popular mystery series, the different
types of mysteries, and where you did puzzles and solved mysteries
from Two-Minute Mysteries and other similar books. So many people,
both children and adults, read mysteries exclusively that I can imagine
this type of promotion being extremely successful.
Created in February, 2008
By Bethany A. Flesher