Tonight, we’ll read the opening to “The Boxcar Children” written by first grade school teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner and published in 1924. This episode originally aired in August of 2021, and we will continue to the end of this book over time.

The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny. They create a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. They eventually meet their grandfather, who is a wealthy and kind man (although the children had believed him to be cruel).

As she wrote the story, Warner read it aloud to her classes and rewrote it many times to make it easy to understand and enjoyable.

‍