Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Oakdale Library | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Valley Library (Lakeland) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Wildwood Library (Mahtomedi) | J FICTION WAR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Before they were the Boxcar Children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden lived with their parents at Fair Meadow Farm. Although times are hard, they're happy--"the best family of all," Mama likes to say. One day, a blizzard hits the countryside, and a car is stranded on the road near their farm. The family in the car needs shelter, and when the Aldens take them in, the strangers soon become friends. But things never stay the same at Fair Meadow Farm, and the spring and summer bring events that will forever change the lives of the Alden children. Newbery-Award winning author Patricia MacLachlan pays loving tribute to the classic novel by Gertrude Chandler Warner in this story of the Alden children's origins and the challenges they faced before their boxcar adventures.
Author Notes
Patricia MacLachlan was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming on March 3, 1938. She received a B.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1962 and taught English at a junior high school until 1979. She began writing picture books and novels at the age of thirty-five. Her works include The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, Skylark, Caleb's Story, Grandfather's Dance, Three Names, All the Places to Love, Before You Came, Cat Talk, and Snowflakes Fall. She won the Golden Kite Award for Arthur, for the Very First Time and the 1986 Newbery Medal for Sarah, Plain and Tall.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-4-Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny have a place in the hearts and on the bookshelves of so many families, and this perfectly positioned prequel will delight fans of the Alden children who have always wondered what happened before the Boxcar Children became the Boxcar Children. During the Great Depression, the family is living at Fairweather Farm. When the Clarks lose their home and are on their way to live with relatives, they become stuck during a blizzard, and the Aldens take them in. Many weeks go by until the part arrives to fix their car. The Alden and Clark children become good friends and attend school together, and when the Clarks leave, the children deal with their sadness. When the sheriff comes to give the Alden children the news that will change their lives forever, the Boxcar Children's journey truly begins. The innocence of the children is well captured through their straightforward dialogue, and each child has a distinct personality that will appeal to old fans and new readers of the series. Gently written, and harkening to a simpler time, this story will be an enjoyable family read and will serve as an easy-to-understand chapter book for emerging readers. Doubtlessly, the series will see reinvigorated interest from this title by an author whose talent for historical fiction will not be lost on young readers.-Alison Donnelly, Collinsville Memorial Public Library, IL (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
For readers who wondered over the past seven decades what happened to the parents of Gertrude Chandler Warner's Boxcar Children, Newbery Medalist MacLachan supplies the answer in this partially satisfying prequel. Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny live with their loving parents on Fair Meadow Farm. Times are hard, but the Aldens make do: father Ben works as a carpenter, and mother Kate sells baked goods. The Alden children continue to epitomize resourcefulness, putting on a circus and creating a barn hideaway. They do chores without complaint. Perhaps it's in character, then, that the untimely death of their parents is taken completely in stride; the children barely grieve. When Henry hints to a neighbor that they will flee rather than risk being sent to an orphanage, he is reminded he will miss his parents' funeral. "I know that you will say good things about them," Henry says. And then they're off. Fans will enjoy this picture of life "before," but it feels like a missed opportunity to make the Alden children a little less perfect. Ages 7-10. Agent: Rubin Pfeffer, East West Literary Agency. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Since 1942, generations of second and third graders have read Gertrude Chandler Warners The Boxcar Children, that compelling story of peripatetic orphans Henry, Jessie, Violet, Benny, and their dog Watch, who bravely and competently care for themselves with little adult intervention. This prequel by Newbery-winning author MacLachlan depicts the children happy at home with their parents at Fair Meadow Farm. Times are tough (allusions are made to the Great Depression), but the Aldens band together, even helping another family in need by housing them until the spring. The centerpiece of the book is a homespun circus the kids create, an activity that nicely captures the low-tech, child-driven entertainment of the day. Inevitably, though, the story comes to its poignant conclusion, with the parents deaths and the children setting off on their own. Their loss is not denied, but MacLachlan, in her no-nonsense way, doesnt dwell on it either (young readers may find it a bit unsettling to immediately continue on to the original book and notice that the Aldens dont seem to be mourning parents who were just killed). Sketchlike pencil illustrations throughout depict the many highs and lows of the siblings tale and nicely complement MacLachlans smooth, accessible narrative. susan dove lempke (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
This prelude slips neatly into the classic series with a rural idyll that comes to a sudden, tragic end. Spring brings not only fresh rounds of games and chores ("Chores are fun," says Meg) for the four Alden children, but new friends too after the Clark family--fleeing frequently mentioned "hard times" in the city--arrives in a storm to stay until their car can be repaired. Indulging occasionally in foreshadowing and artfully incorporating details that will figure in later events, MacLachlan chronicles encounters and minor adventures on the farm in simple, straightforward language. The season changes, the children put on a summer circus, and the Clarks depart at last with a fond "[n]ot good-bye." Then comes an offstage auto accident that orphans Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny and forces them to flee the farm even before the funeral lest they be separated. "The four lambs were on their way." Interest in the classic Boxcar Children Mysteries remains strong, and this prequel should find eager readers. An approachable lead-in that serves to fill in the background both for confirmed fans and readers new to the series. (finished illustrations, afterword and resource list not seen) (Historical fiction. 8-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
MacLachlan, the author of Newbery Medal-winning Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985), takes on the story of Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny before they were the Boxcar Children. Life is simple at Fair Meadow farm: chores, school, and time for fun. When a family gets stuck in a snowstorm, the Aldens take them in and become fast friends. All the children put on a circus, dressing one of the cows up as an elephant. But those familiar with the series know that something devastating is on the way. And toward the end of the book, Mr. and Mrs. Alden head to town and don't come back. The sheriff tells the kids there's been a car accident. Oddly, there's little emotion, with the siblings focused on how to avoid being sent to their estranged grandfather. Even young readers may find it strange that a couple who is ready to take care of them (but is unable to because of the law ) helps them run away. Both in style and events, this recalls books written in a much earlier era. But series fans will like this glimpse into the Aldens' previous life. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The combination of MacLachlan's name and the long-running popularity of the series ensures interest in this prequel.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ONCE content to trumpet the classics already on their backlists, children's book publishers have upped the ante, commissioning sequels and prequels to extend time-tested favorites in either direction. A business model that once pertained only to fun fiction series like the Hardy Boys and Goosebumps has gone decidedly upmarket, and so e have a spate of classics-plus. The first thing you notice about the new "Further Tale of Peter Rabbit" is how much larger it is than Beatrix Potter's original 1902 stocking-stuffer. Potter's maxim - "little books for little hands" - summed up her firmly held belief that a children's book ought to be conceived in a way that the young feel it was made for them. By contrast, its modern sequel aims to make the biggest possible splash. The buzz here is given an added boost by the celebrity factor, with the fine British actress Emma Thompson having written this sequel and recorded its companion CD. Thompson, at a minimum, brings high-end Merchant-Ivory credibility to the project (Imagine if Snooki had been behind it.) But is she the ideal Beatrix Potter surrogate? Just what kind of book has she composed? Potter's original "Tale of Peter Rabbit" was a tough-minded adventure story about curiosity and its consequences, and a barbed comic reflection on the rewards and perils of living life by the seat of your pants. As we all well recall, Peter's father was not a quick enough fellow. The widowed Mrs. Rabbit ruefully reminded her children how he got careless one day and wound up being "put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." Far less is at stake in Thompson's tale, in which what passes for drama comes when, having been accidentally whisked away to Scotland inside a basket, Peter is pressed into playing an ancient hurling game against a champion radish-tosser, described by the author as a "HUGE black rabbit in a kilt." The outcome of the matchup hardly matters, it turns out - not for Peter or for anyone else, and before the reader knows it Thompson herself has made a dash for the exit in a closing line that seems ominously like the promise of a sequel with Benjamin Bunny. While Eleanor Taylor's illustrations bear a fuzzy resemblance to the superlative watercolors that inspired them, they largely lack the clarity, zest and precise knowledge of plant and animal anatomy that give Potter's originals their distinction. Whereas Potter's bunnies gaze sharply at the world, Taylor's stare into space as though wondering why they are there. "The Wind in the Willows" is high on the list of storybook fantasies to which Peter Rabbit fans have traditionally graduated. It, too, celebrates curiosity and the virtues of living by your wits, while also serving up one of children's literature's most exquisite paeans to friendship and the comforts of home. The eclectic narrative (improvised, originally, by Kenneth Graname from a series of bedtime stories and letters to his son) ranges freely from rhapsodic to slapstick, with the latter mood reserved for scenes featuring the fun-loving, hopelessly self-absorbed Mr. Toad. Somehow Jacqueline Kelly has internalized it all, and in "Return to the Willows" she has not only fashioned a witty adventure that is worthy of Grahame, but has done him one better by placing a child character - an agreeably nerdy nephew of Toad's named Humphrey - at the center of the action. Grahame's original cast of characters, by contrast, is a posse of adult males in animal dress, carrying distant echoes of Edwardian literary haunts and watering holes where the author, who by day served as secretary of the Bank of England, found his own companionable riverbank. Running footnotes that archly comment on uncommon words and phrases are a minor irritant, as are Clint Young's notably bloodless illustrations, which portray the principals as soft-focus generic types, rather than characters to care about. Still, it's a welcome surprise to find Toad and friends once more: on the road, in the Wild Wood and best of all, in one another's good company. But you can meet your favorite characters once too often. In the first of Gertrude Chandler Warner's popular "Boxcar Children" series, Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny Alden are introduced as orphans on the run from the authorities and a distant grandfather. They acquire their nickname by setting up housekeeping in an abandoned railway car in the woods where they demonstrate a degree of self-reliance rivaling that of Robinson Crusoe. Warner, a Connecticut schoolteacher, wrote the first "Boxcar Children" book in 1924 and turned out 18 sequels before the ghostwriters took over, producing dozens more. Now the Newbery Medal winner Patricia MacLachlan has written a prequel that promises to shed light not only on the children's pre-orphan days but also on the circumstances of their parents' passing. THE reader therefore approaches this meticulously crafted tale of hardscrabble American family farm life knowing a terrible fate awaits. The Alden parents prove to be salt-of-the-earth, near-saintly people, and the more we learn about them the sadder their deaths are sure to seem. It's a strange box in which to put all but the most die-hard Boxcar fans. Do children really need to meet the parents, let alone know how they died? It might be argued that the children's preternatural resilience raises the question of the source of that resilience. Might they not have come by it via the shining examples of their mother and father? MacLachlan, for whom family continuity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is a favorite theme, responds with a resounding yes. To prove the point, however, she takes the children's rock-solid self-sufficiency to an implausible extreme. Henry, the eldest in particular reacts to news of the deaths with such muted stoicism, it's as though he has been waiting for the awful shoe to drop all along: waiting not merely for bad things to happen to good people, however, but rather for his own too-perfect storybook life to get a tad more real. Leonard S. Marcus's most recent book is "Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices."
