We read The Boxcar Children to our Perfect Non-Reader (who has since read five different Boxcar Children books on her own) as a bedtime book. I think I had never read it; if I had, it was not one of the memorable books of my youth. I think of the series as a sort of hacky Hardy Boys, but the first book doesn’t read as an introduction to a series of mystery books at all. Mostly, it’s a nice little story about four siblings who, when their parents die, run away to live rough rather than go to their gruff grandfather. There are a bunch of sweet details about their life on the streets, both before they find the boxcar and as they set up house in it.
As we were reading it, though, I was horrified by the glamorization of homelessness. The kids are improbably cheerful and hardworking, and the adults who they come in contact with range from superwonderfulbenevolent to mildly helpful. No-one tries to harm the children, or steal from them, or lead them astray. Even the threat of separation comes from somebody who would put the younger children in an orphanage. One of the children gets sick, and a doctor helps them out of the goodness of his heart, although the rich grandfather does eventually reward him.
There’s no indication that they are this close, every minute they are on the street, to death, injury, abuse or a life of drug addiction, hard labor or prostitution. And I’m reading this to my child, who thinks that eating wild berries out of half-cracked dishes found in a garbage dump is hilarious. And yeah, it is, but then, not.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I remember the Christmas/Hannukah/Chrannukah we gave my Jewish step-daughter 36 books, including most of the Boxcar Children books we could find. I say “we,” but it was my Missus that went overboard on the whole book thing. Once the child had unwrapped a couple of them, she could see the individually wrapped, rectangular, slightly floppy packages and know pretty much exactly what they were before opening them. I thought the Boxcar books were reasonably well-written, and took the homeless aspect as the gimmick that seperated that series from other kids’ lit. The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the Bobsey Twins, Ramona Beasley, and the Animorphs didn’t deal with being homeless, so Gertrude Warner had an angle to explore that other children’s lit had not.
I’m not sure there’s a good way to handle the realities of homelessness in that age range. I’d be worried that the storyline would get a little too “V.C. Andrews” for younger readers (or for my tastes, come to that).
We just checked this out of the library for our daughter and she also loves the book. I think the attachment for her is the fantasy of children being able to control their own lives, eat what they want, sleep when they want, without any adult to control their time and activity. I didn’t give a thought about the unspoken, real-life dangers because, for my six-year-old, this story is no more “real” than her Disney Neverland fairy books. In fact, the friends who recommended the story had only one caveat which was the high degree of gender roles among the children.
Well, and somehow I take the gender roles as a cute period detail, but the homelessness got to me. And as you both point out, it’s not like I want my Perfect Non-Reader to read a story about the realities of homelessness, either.
Thanks,
-V.
what is it fiction non ficion
what is it fiction non fiction or what i hate you
Oooh, harsh. If you hadn’t said you hated me, I would have told you. But now, you see, you’ve got up my nose, and there are no answers up YHB’s nose.
Should you return to see this note, I would advise against getting any information from random blogs, which may, after all, by written by assholes. Your local librarian can help you with authoritative sources.
Thanks,
-V.