The Boxcar Children

The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner, is the first in a series of mystery novels for early-to-middle-grade readers. The story tells of four orphaned children who find shelter in an abandoned railroad boxcar and learn how to live by themselves in the woods while hiding from their feared grandfather.

First published in 1924 and revised by the author in 1942, the book proved popular, and Warner wrote 19 more books about the Boxcar Children. Other authors have contributed to the series, which now includes more than 160 titles. The National Education Association and the School Library Journal place The Boxcar Children among the 100 best books for young readers.

An electronic version of the 2017 Whitman reprint, illustrated by Anne Yvonne Gilbert and Gretchen Ellen Powers, forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Four children, ages five to 14, enter a bakery and buy three loaves of bread. They ask to sleep on the store’s benches for the night, and the baker’s wife lets them. The older children, Henry and Jessie, overhear the baker and wife discussing a plan to keep the kids but send the youngest, Benny, to a home for children. Henry and Jessie quickly gather up Benny and Violet, their 10-year-old sister, and escape into the night.

They walk for hours along a road through farmland. At dawn, they sleep in a haystack, then resume their walk after sunset. A horse and buggy appear, and they hide; as it passes, they hear the passengers—the baker and his wife—talking about finding the children. That night the kids sleep in a woods; in the morning, a storm breaks out, and the four find shelter in an abandoned boxcar among the trees. They decide to live in the boxcar.

Henry, 14, goes to the nearest town to buy some food. A dog appears at the boxcar, its paw pierced with a thorn. Jessie, who’s 12, removes the thorn, and they adopt the dog, whom Benny names Watch. Henry returns with food.

The next day, Henry goes to the nearby town to find work; Jessie, Violet, and Benny head out to find “treasures” and discover a trash dump, where they collect old cups, saucers, spoons, and other kitchen things and bring them to the boxcar. They clean them in a nearby stream. Henry returns with more food; he says he got a job doing yard work at a doctor’s house. He builds a fire, and they sterilize their new dinnerware in boiling water.

That night, sleeping in the boxcar, they hear a noise in the woods. Watch growls. They close up the car and wait, but nothing appears. Henry returns to work the next day while Jessie, Violet, and Benny build a fireplace. Henry returns with some meat he bought with his pay and says his employer, Dr. Moore, loves his work and gave him a hammer and some nails. Henry also has a bag of vegetables from thinning the garden of Dr. Moore’s live-in mother. The kids chop up the meat and veggies and cook them in a kettle. It becomes a delicious meal.

Henry and Benny walk to the dump, find a few good boards, and from them, Henry builds a cart with wheels that Benny found. The next day, Sunday, using the cart, they gather big stones and logs and build a dam in the creek that makes a pool for swimming and bathing.

On Monday, Henry brings all the Boxcar Children to the Moore house to help harvest cherries. They have fun, eat lots of the fruit, stay for lunch and cherry dumplings, and finish up late in the afternoon. They all get paid, and the adults think they’re wonderful. Dr. Moore, though, wonders who they are.

That evening, he sees a want ad in the paper that offers a huge reward from wealthy mill owner James Henry Alden for information about his four grandchildren. In the morning, Dr. Moore sends young Henry to Mr. Alden’s annual Field Day races, where Henry enters the free-for-all race and wins. Mr. Alden shakes hands with Henry, but Henry doesn’t reveal his last name, and neither of them realizes who the other is.

Violet becomes very ill, and Henry runs for Dr. Moore, who drives to the boxcar and brings the children to his house. Dr. Moore stays up all night, watching over Violet. In the morning, Mr. Alden appears and wants his grandchildren, but the Moores warn him that the kids are afraid of him. He offers to get to know them before telling them he’s their grandfather, and over the next several days, the children grow to like him very much.

Henry finally figures out that Mr. Alden is their grandfather. The kids are surprised that he’s a nice person after all. He brings them to his beautiful house and says they can live there if they like. They accept, but they miss their boxcar, so he secretly has the car moved to his backyard and surprises them with it. They’re delighted and promise him they’ll never leave.