“And the Rec Center is looking for junior camp leaders,” Henry added. “Taking little kids on adventures would be fun!”
Benny looked out the window and into the woods as they drove past them again. He thought about his own exciting adventure.
Years ago, the children’s parents had died, leaving them without a home. They knew they had a grandfather but had never met him, and they had heard he was mean. So, when they thought they would be sent to live with him, they ran away into the woods. There they found an old boxcar, which they made their home. They found their dog, Watch, while they were living in the boxcar. When Grandfather finally discovered the children, they learned he was actually a very kind man. He loved them very much. They became a family, and Grandfather moved their boxcar into the backyard of their home in Greenfield so they could use it as a clubhouse.
“I wish I could help with the little kids,” Benny said. The Aldens laughed, since Benny was not much older than the campers.
“It would be great to find a place where we could all work together,” Jessie added.
“Any other ideas?” Grandfather asked.
The Aldens were quiet for a moment as they tried to think of places where they could all volunteer as a family.
Suddenly Violet gasped. “Stop!” she cried. “Look!”
Grandfather pulled the car over to the side of the road.
“What’s the matter, Violet?” he asked.
They were sitting in front of Hawthorne School.
Violet pointed a shaky finger out the window.
“The door to the school is open!” she exclaimed. “It wasn’t before!”
The Aldens peered out to see that the iron gate of the old school was wide open. And so was the front door!
“I thought the school has been locked up since it closed,” Benny said.
“It has been,” Henry replied.
The siblings looked at the old school. The sun was setting behind the trees, casting a long shadow across the front of the building. In the darkness, the children could clearly see a flickering light in one of the upstairs windows.
“Is someone in there?” Violet asked. “Is this school really haunted?”
GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book, The Boxcar Children, quickly proved she had succeeded.
Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write the mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car—the situation the Alden children find themselves in.
While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner’s books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible—something else that delights young readers.
Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.
Gertrude Chandler Warner grew up in Putnam, Connecticut. She wrote The Boxcar Children because she had always dreamed about what it would be like to live in a caboose or a freight car—just as the Aldens do. When readers asked for more adventures, Warner wrote more books—a total of nineteen in all.
After her death, other authors have continued to write stories about Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden, and today the Boxcar Children series has more than one hundred books.
Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Election Day Dilemma
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