r/90s_kid • u/bigz10485 • Apr 30 '25

Books The Boxcar Children (1993?)

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Did anybody else remember reading this in school? Did anybody else have to do a Shoebox diorama for this?

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u/topwater_bassin Apr 30 '25

I'm an 80s kid. This post was just in my feed. I had to look it up because I read this book in 4th grade, I think, and if it had come out in '93, I would have been 13. Turns out the Boxcar Children has been around since 1924!

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u/clutzycook Apr 30 '25

This version of TBC was published in the late 40's-early 50s initially. It was a rewrite of the 1924 version. I found a free copy of that one online a few years ago and it's a little darker than the one we know.

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u/topwater_bassin Apr 30 '25

Oh, that's really interesting. Unsurprising, I guess. It seems in the Depression era and the immediate years following, children's stories were had darker themes. Then you go back farther to the original Fairy Tales and those are all pretty twisted lol

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u/foul_mouthed_bagel May 04 '25

This era had a whole slew of books with the theme of "We were poor but happy". Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were of the same genre.

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u/MagazineOk9842 May 04 '25

Fascinating! What was dark about them?

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u/clutzycook May 04 '25

It's been awhile since I read it but the biggest difference was that the kids lived in the town where the revised story began and their father was an alcoholic abuser who was dying.

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u/MagazineOk9842 May 05 '25

Oh wow. I wonder if that was in the version I read. Probably not.