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

#4 – Mystery Ranch, by Gertrude Chandler Warner

#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

The Boxcar Children Cookbook, by Diane Blaine & L. Kate Deal

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.

  • This is the website of the company that publishes The Boxcar Children. It lists all of the books in the Boxcar Children Series, shows youthe covers of all ofthose books,and tells you what they're about.
  • -- 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.
  • – 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.
  • -- 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.
  • – 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.
  • -- 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.

- This video is a review of “The Deserted

Library Mystery.”

- This video is a review of “Mystery Ranch.”

About the Author: Gertrude Chandler Warner

  • - 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 () 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 () 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 “1933-1941” or “1941-1945”. Then you can pick the events that happened during those years that sound interesting to you and read about them.
  • - 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.
  • - 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.
  • - 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.
  • - 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.
  • - 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.
  • - 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.
  • - 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.

  • WorldGeography -- To use this website, you have to go to the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library webpage () 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.
  • - 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!
  • - 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.