I'm done with The Boxcar Children series, after the catastrophe that is #24 "The Mystery of the Hidden Painting"

I’m trying to remember why I used to like these books so much when I was a kid.  I must have checked out a dozen of them each time we went to the library when I was about 7-years-old.  I thought they were funny and a little suspenseful.  I even did a book report on one of their adventures at a dude ranch.  But now…I guess I just grew up, or developed a better literature palette, or something, because these books are just not well written.

The language is forced, awkward, and often pretentious.  No one actually talks like this, and certainly not children.  The writer feels the need to bring up the boxcar, and why the children lived there, every other page.  Sure, not everyone who picks up a Boxcar Children book is going to know the story of why they are called that, but surely they’ll remember being told three pages ago – you don’t need to say it so many times within the same book.

As for the mystery that the children get to solve, it had potential – they want to find the long lost (presumed stolen) necklace of their late grandmother, in time for their grandfather’s birthday.  (By the way, how many kids actually call their grandfather “Grandfather”?)  They see a photo of a woman in the newspaper (how many 12-year-olds read the newspaper) who appears to be wearing the necklace and immediately concoct a scheme to interrogate the woman.  Of course, multiple people in the village try to scare away the children: calling them late at night, following them in a car with tinted windows.  And when the children don’t get the information they want, they latch onto a “clue” on a return address label that happened to come from a town right next to where the necklace had been stolen from.

The overreaction of the townsfolk to the children’s investigation is downright absurd.  It’s not like the police were pounding down doors, it was a couple of kids who just wanted to know what happened to their grandmother’s necklace.  If the people really wanted to keep it a secret, they should have lied politely to the children’s faces instead of acting rude and suspicious.

The mystery ends, like always, with a non-forced confession from the perpetrator and, of course, no involvement from the police.  The culprit gets away with it, and the children and their grandfather even allow for the necklace to stay where it was (in a museum in the middle of nowhere).  The incredibly unrealistic ending is a fit for the incredibly unrealistic plot, and neither are worth the trouble of putting up with that horrid writing style.

I may have loved the Boxcar Children when I was Benny’s age, but I think children today deserve better writing than this series has to offer.

American Girl faulters with "Peril at King's Creek."

I had a very hard time getting past how utterly flat the language was with this book.  All descriptions, what little there were of them, were cliché at best.  There was nothing new and exciting that allowed me to feel like I was actually there, experiencing it with the characters.  As for the main character, Felicity Merriman, there was very little individuality or personality noticeable in her thoughts or actions.  Sure, she expressed emotion – but it was all predictable and flat.  She could be “glad” but never “overjoyed” or “delighted.”  Again, it was cliché responses to a predictable plot.

The only response that seemed out of character was when Felicity identifies a spy and decides to go after him herself.  Yes, she does the smart thing and contacts the local Patriot army (or more accurately, she contacts her father who is a member of the Patriots), but she also chases after him on horseback in the wee hours of the morning.  This does not seem to be the natural course of action for a girl who’s spent the entire story having gauged responses to all that she sees around her.

Predictable plot and flat writing make for a throw-away book.  Just don’t bother with this one.

The Boxcar Children series stumbles with Special #3: "The Mystery at Snowflake Inn"

It's difficult to read a book meant for children when the language is so clearly not childlike.  The use of proper grammar in every sentence, an utter absence of slang or local vernacular, the constant use of "yes" instead of "yeah" or "okay" make the book feel more like a 10 page beginner reader, rather than a 100+ page chapter book.

As for the mystery in this story, there seems to be a lot of jumping to conclusions on the part of the children.  The Aldens, along with their cousin, Soo Lee, are at a Vermont Inn for the holidays (it’s never stated, but the holiday is obviously Christmas).  The first incident that gets their mystery caps on is that the horses for the sleigh rides are let out of the barn.  Now, I’ve lived on farms and know that it is in fact possible to accidentally let the horses out.  Horses are smart creatures, and if you don’t lock the pens up real tight, they can finagle many types of locks open again and get out.  It’s also possibly, considering how obviously understaffed the inn is, that the person in charge of locking them up at night got distracted by one of the many plumbing issues and fire hazards around the place, and forgot to check all of the locks before leaving the barn.  However, the children automatically assume that someone intentionally let the horses out of the barn.  While this turned out to be true, it is not a necessary conclusion given the circumstances. 

The only clue the children unearthed by snooping around was that there were strange bootprints in the snow outside the barn that could match either the Inn owner’s son, Larry (who was the one to go out to the barn and discover the horses were missing, so of course his bootprints were there) or Larry’s cousin, Betsy (who’s an avid rider and goes to the barn every day, so her bootprints would be there, too).

The suspects are easy to identify, as everyone in the inn loudly expresses how they feel about every little thing at all times.  No one seems to be harboring any secret motives as their intentions are all out in the open for anyone to see.  The son wants to take over the business and make major renovations.  The cousin thinks the place is a dump and doesn’t want to be there or around anyone (she comes across as a spoiled brat).  The two kids staying at the Inn with the parents really don’t want to be there and just want to go back home.  The cook is fed up with the poor excuse for a stove she has to work with and keeps demanding that it get replaced (and when it craps out on her one too many times, she quits).  All these revelations take place in public, quite loudly.  There are no secrets at the Inn.  In fact, the “secret” passageway, that allows the culprit to sabotage the oven in the middle of the night, is shown to the Aldens by the Inn owner on their first day.

The children don’t actually solve the mystery at all.  The culprit becomes overwhelmed by the holiday festivities and confesses all.  Sure, the children are able to see how it was that the culprit did everything – but that’s hind sight rather than inductive reasoning.  They wouldn’t have been able to solidly identify the culprit based on the paltry “evidence” they’d amassed by that point.  Definitely not the Boxcar Children’s best work.

American Girl, Rebecca Rubin, solves the mystery of "The Crystal Ball"

 True to the American Girl tradition, the stories of Rebecca Rubin integrate lessons about accepting diversity and female independence while offering an entertaining story.  In New York City, before America’s involvement in WWI, immigrant families lived and worked together, creating communities built on mutual trust rather than a common genealogy or first language.  This is why, when things start going missing in the brownstone where Rebecca and her family live, there is a high sense of betrayal.  The prime suspect in the thefts is Rebecca’s cousin, Josef, who’s come to live with her family for the summer.  As an aspiring carpenter, Josef has taken odd jobs in many of the apartments in the building, and appears to be the only person who had access to all the missing items.

Rebecca shows herself to be level headed, early in the story, when she’s quick to work out how a street fortune teller is likely reading body language and vocal cues to guess at her customer’s situation.  She even realizes that the vague answers the fortune teller gives out can easily mean a number of things, but the customer is quick to think it means what they want to hear.  Though Rebecca has a good head and a great deal of common sense for someone so young, she is still drawn into the hype over the stolen items, and allows herself to wonder if her cousin could be guilty.  When she notices him coming out of a pawnshop, she begins to worry that everyone’s accusations may hold merit.  Finding an excuse to scope out the pawnshop leads to further doubt when she notices items for sale that may very well be the items in question.

Not one to take appearances at face value, Rebecca keeps digging into the issue.  She is the first to posit that the buildings interim handyman, Mr. Silver, is a little suspicious – maybe too friendly, always hanging around, and able to pick locks with a hairpin.  Though Rebecca’s older sister, Sadie, doesn’t believe it could be Mr. Silver, she is willing to support Rebecca in her quest to find more information.  When the building’s janitor, Mr. Rossi – who’s laid up with a broken hand – wants to take his deceased wife’s special candlesticks to a fortune teller that Mr. Silver pointed him towards, Rebecca’s suspicions increase, and she and Sadie follow after.

Rebecca’s determination to find the truth, rather than accepting things as they seem, and her determination to see her friends taken care of, lead her to finding the thief, and she’s quick to figure out how he pulled it all off, too.  Even after she’s put in danger, she refuses to back down, and stands up to the pawnshop broker who bought all the stolen merchandise (and was refusing to sell back the family heirloom Josef’s father was forced to pawn earlier that year when the family wasn’t making ends meet).  She shows that keeping one’s head, not jumping to conclusions, and watching out for your friends is within every girls’ power.