An ill-conceived prequel

You know the old joke about what you get if you play a country-and-western song backwards? (Answer: You get your truck back; you get your dog back; you get your girl back....)  The Boxcar Children Beginning is like the opposite of that.

The Boxcar Children is a children's classic about a set of four insanely resilient and omnicompetent siblings who make their own home in an abandoned boxcar until they are rewarded by being taken in by their wealthy grandfather who showers them with material possessions: your classic rags-to-riches story, kind of Little Orphan Annie times four.  I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to publish a prequel, which establishes the Alden children on their own happy farm, only to kill off their parents and end the book with them homeless and adrift.

"All happy families are alike"; thus spake Tolstoy in the first sentence of Anna Karenina, and it's the bane of the premise of this book.  The Boxcar Children is enjoyable because of the things the children accomplish and the obstacles they overcome; The Boxcar Children Beginning is about the same children being happy but boring until they are suddenly left bereft victims.

To write this ill-conceived volume, the publishers turned to the master of children's books in which nothing happens, Patricia MacLachlan.  I know Sarah, Plain and Tall won the Newbery, but, my gosh, it's boring.  Every now and then something almost threatens to happen (a dangerous storm, the possibility of Sarah going back to Maine), but it's always resolved in the least interesting way possible (no one is hurt and nothing is damaged; Sarah comes back from town bringing presents) .

MacLachlan deals with the necessary fact that the actual pitched plotline of this book is family is happy, parents die, the end by introducing a family fleeing the city during what is meant to be the Great Depression who stays with the Aldens until they can repair their car.  The irony, of course, is that, while the edition of The Boxcar Children with which everyone is familiar, with the classic silhouette illustrations, was published in 1942, the book was actually first printed in 1923.  Even in 1942, the story was clearly a nostalgic look back at an earlier time.  MacLachlan's efforts to set the story just before World War II are jarring when set against the text of the original, from the soon-to-be-late Mother Alden playing "Over the Rainbow" (written 1939), "Good Night Irene" (1933), and "Pennies from Heaven" (1936) on the piano, to families on the brink of poverty and homelessness driving around in their own automobiles.

Worse are the anachronisms introduced into the story, whether it's Ma and Pa Alden assuring Violet she can have any career she wants to when she grows up, or the Alden family's adult neighbor urging the children to call him by his first name.  If you're going to set a children's story in a historical period, then make it historically accurate!

Faith picked up this prequel at Half-Price Books, not as a used copy but from a stack of surplus that had been sent there to be sold at a loss.  I can only hope this means that this blatant attempt to wring more money from Gertrude Chandler Warner's literary corpse has not been a banner success.