From the Bookshelf Indeed

Story ID:	1246
Written by:	Carol J Garriott
Organization:	home/retired
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	Seadrift Texas USA
Year:	2003
Person:	Gertrude Chandler Warner

A recent post by my niece Shannon Hyle about books on one’s shelf has triggered some introspective musings on this day after Thanksgiving.

After relocating to the Texas Coast, retiring from 30 years in typesetting, I managed to get through one full year before scouting up some part-time jobs. Car and home purchases, you know. Job availability in my small town and sparsely populated county was nothing to write home about. After a variety of endeavors that, while interesting, were either too much work (combination motel/RV park/marina management) or too little income (beach park gatekeeper) to continue with, I struck it rich right in my very own tiny village.

A position had opened up in the branch library, due to the retirement of the librarian. I don’t think there could be a more perfect job for me. Anything to do with books is a pure joy, and they want to pay me for it? I quickly picked up the basic organization of things, and soon developed a delightful rapport with library patrons old and new.

In that first year, as I became acquainted with what was on the shelves, I ran across a junior fiction section that literally set me back on my heels. “The Boxcar Children”! I could not believe what I was seeing in my hand. I had read this book when I was a child, in the 1940s!

Of course these paperbacks were far more recent printings, but there it was, the story of those four orphans running away so they could stay together and not be separated. Their escapades of finding an abandoned boxcar back in the woods and outfitting it with dishes and furniture they found in dumps and trash bins fueled an imagination already finely tuned by my somewhat solitary playtime on the Kansas prairie.

The author Gertrude Chandler Warner once wrote for her fans, "Perhaps you know that the original Boxcar Children . . . raised a storm of protest from librarians who thought the children were having too good a time without any parental control! That is exactly why children like it! Most of my own childhood exploits, such as living in a freight car, received very little cooperation from my parents."

Ms. Warner was born in 1890 in Putnam Connecticut, and was a teacher before she embarked on her writing career. She volunteered for the American Red Cross and other charitable organizations. She died in 1979 at the age of 89.

The first 18 books in the Boxcar Children series were published by Scott Foresman. Albert Whitman & Company continues publishing these classic stories. After Ms. Warner’s death, the publisher continued to receive mail from children across the country asking for more adventures about Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny. In 1991, Albert Whitman added to The Boxcar Children Mysteries so children of today can enjoy and relate to the adventures of these independent children, who were also empathetic and caring about everyone they encountered.

Putnam, Connecticut, opened a Gertrude Chandler Warner Museum in 2003. The desk was her father's, and she wrote her first story at age 9 at this desk, "Gollywog at the Zoo."

Some websites to browse for more information are
http://www.putnamct.us/putnamatglance/LocalLinks/GertrudeWarner.htm
and the Albert Whitman & Company site,
http://www.boxcarchildren.com/ Or just Google for her name or Albert Whitman.

One of my greatest joys in this new “career” of mine as branch manager of my small library is introducing today’s children to “The Boxcar Children.” Oddly enough their adventures are timely, even in this vastly changed world from 1942. One reason for that, I believe, is that the premise of loving your family and friends, taking care of them, helping them out when necessary, and DOING IT without thinking “someone else will do it,” is not only timeless, but extremely satisfying.

We have in my library something like 42 books of the series, and I am rewarded by these new readers in the 21st century coming back time and again for yet another volume of imaginative adventure.