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Books like The Boxcar Children

The Boxcar Children

I read this book as a child and oh, did I ever cherish it. I'm a detail-oriented person, and this book speaks to the super organized control freak in me. Warner weaves so many details into the lives of the Boxcar children that, as a young'un, I found myself mentally picturing their home in exquisite detail. Over a decade since I last read it, I still remember the milk kept cool by the waterfall, or the kids carrying the cherries back to the boxcar between them. These details are the strength of the book - for the little girl or boy who liked playing house and inventing routines, this book is perfect escapism.The book is by no means perfect - the children are saccharine, never fight and they don't seem to have much in the way of distinct personalities beyond their age-directed roles in the family unit. Also, as the series goes on, I was always confused as to why they inexplicably began solving mysteries, since this first book has nothing to do with anything like that. The book really does romanticize homelessness tremendously as well. Nothing bad ever befalls the children, they never go hungry or have any serious problems in meeting all their basic needs. Still, because of how much I loved this book, I can't help giving it a better rating than it probably deserves, if only to reflect how much dang fun it was for me to read and re-read as a child.

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