Gertrude Chandler Warner and The Boxcar Children
64
Gertrude Chandler Warner and The Boxcar Children
64Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780807528389 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Children's Books |
| Publication date: | 01/01/1997 |
| Series: | Los chicos del vagon de carga: A Stepping Stone Book (TM) |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 64 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.00(d) |
| Lexile: | 990L (what's this?) |
| Age Range: | 7 - 10 Years |
About the Author
biography;author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Growing Up On Main Street
When Gertrude Chandler Warner was little, she lived in a house right across the street from a railroad station. She liked to look into the caboose of the train that stopped there. Inside she could see a small stove with a tin coffeepot on it. On a little table there were cracked cups with no saucers. What fun, she thought, to keep house in a caboose!
The Warner family lived in Putnam, Connecticut, a town surrounded by the rolling hills, tall woods, and many rivers of the New England countryside. Gertrude spent all of her life there. The town had been named for General Israel Putnam, who led troops in the Revolutionary War.
Gertrude's mother's and father's families had lived in eastern Connecticut for a long time. Her father, Judge Edgar Warner, was a descendant of Ichabod Warner, one of the early settlers of Windham County, and of John Avery of Groton, who fought in the Revolutionary War. Her mother, Jane Elizabeth Carpenter Warner, was a descendant of the Chandlers, who had come to nearby Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1686, ninety years before the American Revolution.
Edgar Warner graduated from Harvard Law School in 1872. In 1885, he opened a law office in Putnam, and two years later he and Jane Elizabeth Carpenter married. Edgar and Jane Warner were helpful people who became involved in the everyday life of Putnam. Edgar became the first judge of the city court; and Jane, or Jennie, as she was called, became head of the town school committee.
Gertrude Chandler Warner was born on April 16, 1890. She was the middle of three children. Her sister, Frances, was two years older; and her brother, John, was two years younger. The children grew up in the house at 42 South Main Street, which had been built for their family by Gertrude's grandfather, John Carpenter. During Gertrude's childhood, the house was heated by wood and lit by kerosene lamps.
The children were very much at the center of the family's life. One time when carpenters came to add a fireplace to the house, when Gertrude was about three, they also lowered some of the house windows so that Gertrude and Frances and John could look out without having to climb up on a chair or a window seat. Frances later said that they had little to complain about. Once though, on a winter afternoon, she and Gertrude did plan to run away because their mother made them stop sliding down the icy back porch roof!
Gertrude was a busy and active young girl, but she was not very strong. She had a lot of sore throats. There were few vaccines then, so she also got many childhood illnesses such as measles and mumps. Still, she attended the Fifth District School House with the other Putnam children.
Gertrude loved to read. She often went to the public library, which was on the second floor of a building near the Warners' home. Gertrude would take a book out on a Saturday morning, read it, and return it that afternoon. She was disappointed when the librarian, Miss Emma Kinney, told her she could not take out another book that same day. She had to wait until the next time the library opened — and that wasn't until Wednesday! Her favorite book was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Gertrude and Frances wrote their own stories and poems. Their mother always bought notebooks for them so they could be neat and organized. But sometimes Gertrude had trouble finding a good pencil around the house. She always said her family had the worst old pencil stubs — they had to be sharpened with a kitchen knife!
Gertrude wrote her first book when she was just nine years old. She had been late getting home from school several days in a row, and her mother wanted to know why. She told her mother she was writing a "Golliwogg Book." But she really had been having tea parties on the flat rock in the schoolyard. When her mother wanted to see the book, Gertrude had to write it fast! She called her book Golliwogg at the Zoo, copying the idea of Florence Upton's popular 1898 book, The Golliwogg at the SeaSide. Gertrude illustrated the book with watercolors and gave it to Grandfather Carpenter for Christmas in 1900. The book plate at the front of the book says: "Mr. John A. Carpenter, Compliments of Authoress and Illustrator." After that, Gertrude made a new book each Christmas.
The next year Gertrude's book contained three short stories: "Two Christmases," "The Mumps," and "13230 Gold Dollars." She gave this one to Grandmother Carpenter. In 1902 she wrote "A Fish Story," which Frances illustrated. The girls listed the publisher of their book as "Warner & Co." Two years later, "A Thanksgiving Story" was "composed and typewritten by Gertrude and bound by Frances." In 1906, Gertrude put together photos and typed the story for "Reminiscences of an Old Farm," which she "lovingly dedicated to Grandpa" at Christmas time.
Gertrude enjoyed playing with her dollhouse, which had handmade furniture and china dolls about the length of her hand. Mr. and Mrs. Delight were the doll family, and Gertrude was the carpenter who made new furniture for them, the dress-maker who clothed them, and the doctor who talked to them about their "medicines." Sometimes Gertrude tried to make special items for the house. To make a pretend pair of scissors, she once put pins on the nearby railroad track. She thought that the trains passing over would push the pins together just enough to make a perfect pair of tiny scissors. But the engine was so heavy it ground the pins to nothing. Gertrude found that the trolley track worked better for her experiment. At last the dollhouse got a decent pair of scissors.
There was always work as well as play at the Warners' house. The family lived so near the railroad tracks that smoke and cinders from the trains covered the house's windowsills. The sills had to be dusted twice every day, and the curtains needed to be washed often.
Gertrude earned some money by killing the flies in the house. The Warners lived right by a road where horse-drawn buggies often passed — and that meant flies. Gertrude got ten cents for every hundred she killed. She always found it easy to get a hundred.
Sometimes Gertrude and her family planned picnics in the Connecticut hills of Woodstock and Pomfret and clambakes in nearby Rhode Island. When Gertrude was seven, the whole family went to the beach for the first time. The children had never seen the ocean. Gertrude loved the beautiful white sand of the shore and the fancy meals they had at their summer cottage. She called the family's vacation at the beach "seventh heaven!"
Gertrude began taking wonderful Sunday afternoon rides with her Grandfather Carpenter when she was eight. He would call to ask, "Want to go to the farm?" The answer was always, "Yes!" Soon a two-seated buggy pulled by a little black horse named Topsy came to the door, and the whole family piled in. The children took turns sitting in the front seat beside Grandpa, and sometimes they even got to drive. That is how Gertrude learned to drive a horse.
The children knew that the Carpenters' farmhouse, built in 1803 and owned by Gertrude's Great-Uncle Charles, was exactly two and three-quarters miles down River Road. They had measured the distance themselves. They tied a rag to a spoke of the wheel and then counted how many times the wheel went around between their house and the farm. When they multiplied the number of revolutions by the circumference of the wheel, they knew the exact distance!
On the ride, they passed a pond which was filled with peep-frogs and wild blue flag flowers in the spring. Sometimes they stopped at the edge of a bog. Once, at the risk of their lives, Gertrude thought, they climbed over the stone wall along the side of the bog to search for blue iris for an herbarium Frances was making.
They often stopped at a watering trough to give Topsy a drink. Then they all drank out of the rusty tin dipper there. Nearby, they picked flowers — violets in spring, goldenrod and asters in late summer. Gertrude liked the violets best of all. Soon she and the other children knew the names of every wildflower around. Gertrude learned to recognize all the birds and their songs, too.
When the children arrived at the Carpenter farm, they each got one of Aunt Lyddy's sugar cookies, made in the shape of an oak leaf, from her special covered tin pail. They ate their cookies slowly, breaking off one section of the leaf at a time. Then they went for a walk.
In the woods near the farmhouse they sometimes found treasures. In spring they found "pippins," or young, tender checkerberry leaves, to nibble. Once they found a rare flower, the giant purple fringed orchis. It was six feet tall!
If they went toward the spring, they passed the hay barns, the pigpen, and the chicken house, where the hens were sitting on newly laid eggs. They went by the cranberry bog and sometimes picked the sour cranberries. Along the brook they found watercress. The peppery watercress, mixed into a boiled dressing, made a good salad.
Sometimes they went over to the pond and climbed into the two flat-bottomed boats tied up there. They would row around the pond, trailing their fingers in the warm water and watching the darting fish.
But for excitement nothing could beat watching the trains that went right by the Warners' house. Many trains passed, day and night. At least four a day went to New York City. The train everyone called the "White Train," because it was painted all white and gold, went through Putnam on its way to New York about 4:00 P.M. The children waved to the people on the White Train, and the engineer and passengers waved back.
Many trains also went to Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts. Trains from the south always blew a loud whistle just before they entered the "cut," a steep-sided valley cut through the rocks. The trains brought mail to Putnam several times a day. Sometimes the Warners and other townspeople took a train for a day of shopping in one of the nearby cities.
The children, especially Gertrude, also liked to look into the railroad station across the street. It had a large dining room, where tables were set with damask cloths and napkins and railroad silverware. Putnam was an important railroad center in the early 1900s, and travelers changing rail lines could be fed well at the station.
There were a lot of different shops in Putnam, not far from the Warners' home. When Gertrude was a little older, she did errands for her family. At Champeau's Dry Goods Shop, when a customer paid for something, the money was put in a cup and sent along wires to a cage in the back of the shop. There the store owner made change, which was put back into the cup and returned along the wire to the counter where customers waited. Gertrude thought this was magic!
Gertrude also went to Pray's Market with her family. They had to go down a flight of stone steps into the market, and it always felt so damp there that Gertrude wondered why everyone didn't catch cold.
She and her family bought red disks of Edam cheese, large pickles, salt pork for baked beans, and in the cold season, roast pork. If Gertrude needed patterns for sewing, she went to Manning's Dry Goods Store and got them from Miss Lottie Manning.
Sometimes when Gertrude went off to the shops on her own, she got lost. She did not know Union Square from Union Street. Somehow, though, she used to find her way to Payne's Candy Store to buy stick candy. Gertrude liked the talking parrot there. She always asked him questions, but he didn't answer them very often!
When Gertrude and Frances were in grade school, they had a theater and a symphony in the attic, with a broken melodeon as the main instrument. Everyone in Gertrude's family enjoyed music. When Gertrude was a teenager, she became fascinated with the cello. One day her father came home from New York City with a cello for her. The cello, a bow, a carrying case, and an instruction book cost fourteen dollars. That was about the price of a new bicycle then. It was also about two weeks of a teacher's salary. Her father had brought her a special gift!
Gertrude's family soon formed a home orchestra. Gertrude played the cello, Frances and Mother played violins, Papa was on piano, and John played the coronet. They had wonderful times playing together, and sometimes friends joined in.
When Gertrude was halfway through her second year of high school, she had to stop going to classes. She was having terrible sore throats, and was coughing and sneezing a lot. Instead of going to school, she studied at home with a tutor, and her mother taught her lessons, too. Frances finished high school in 1907, and John finished in 1912. Gertrude never did graduate, though she continued with her home lessons.
In 1907, Grandfather Carpenter died. His death ended a chapter in the children's lives. Frances wrote that Grandmother often said Grandfather's "favorite recreation" was his grandchildren. In her 1904 "A Thanksgiving Story," Gertrude had written about the laughter and play, talk, and good food the family shared when they gathered at Grandfather and Grandmother Carpenter's home. They all "felt as much at home there as in their own houses," she said. Grandma "had the basket of toys and the high-chairs, the little knives and forks, and the ginger-cookies; and Grandpa was always ready to play."
CHAPTER 2Creating A Life
In the early 1900s, Putnam was growing. New schools and churches were built. New bridges were constructed over the rivers, using cement rather than wood as in the past.
Life was becoming easier and more comfortable in Putnam. At the turn of the century, a local paper called the Putnam Patriot advertised water- and steam-heating systems, refrigerators, and gas stoves for people's homes. Local stores offered treadle sewing machines, bicycles, pianos and parlor organs, and cameras for their customers' use and pleasure. By 1906 and 1907, automobiles and typewriters were for sale. Edison phonographs and records, and safety razors, too, could be purchased by Putnam shoppers. The local power company advertised, "We will not be Satisfied till every house in the City is equipped with Electricity and Gas for Lighting."
The most exciting invention, though, was the automobile. The first one Gertrude ever saw was a steam-powered car called the Stanley Steamer. It was driven by a man named Carl Hopkins. Whenever he drove by, everyone rushed out to look.
In 1905 moving pictures could be viewed at the local Bradley Playhouse. Dramas and minstrel shows were performed, too. Isle of Spice, a Broadway show with twenty whistling songs and unique dances, came to Putnam on November 27, 1905.
There were changes in the Warner household, too, as the children began to pursue new opportunities. In 1911, Frances graduated from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She soon began teaching high school. John went on to Worcester Polytechnic Institute, also in Massachusetts, and graduated in 1917. He then went to study in Paris for two years.
Gertrude wondered what she was going to do. She began writing for a Sunday school newspaper published in the nearby town of Danielson. She got one dollar for every five hundred words. She also worked with her mother and sister to put together "A Chandler Book." It told about the ancestors of Marcia Jane Chandler Carpenter, Gertrude's grandmother, and showed family photographs taken in 1915.
Gertrude wished to have a real book published — one that would be for everybody, not just her family. In 1916, her wish came true. Gertrude had her first officially published book. One thousand copies were printed. The House of Delight is about her wonderful childhood dollhouse, where the small china dolls named Mr. and Mrs. Delight lived. Gertrude's brother, John, took the photographs for the book. Their cousin, Bertha Child, posed for the pictures of "Betsey," who is the head of the miniature "house of delight." Gertrude dedicated this book, like the stories she had written as a young child, to Grandfather Carpenter. She called him "my Best playmate." "It was an epoch to have something published," she said.
Gertrude's mother had once told her and Frances that she liked to see them writing but didn't think they could make a career of it. For once their mother was wrong! Gertrude and Frances began publishing stories and essays in magazines. Frances also began teaching English at Mount Holyoke College.
Mrs. Warner had also been wrong about World War I. She thought the world was too advanced for fighting. But the war that had begun in Europe in 1914 continued. There was terrible fighting there, and millions of people died. In 1917, the United States became involved by declaring war on Germany.
Life changed in Putnam, and everywhere else in the United States, too. Some young men left Putnam to go fight overseas. Some of the women helped out by working in the textile mills that made cloth and thread, and by doing other jobs that needed to be done in the war emergency. People put up American flags in front of their homes to show how much they cared about their country. Many people volunteered to help the American Red Cross, which was working to get bandages and supplies to soldiers fighting in faraway countries. Gertrude's grandmother began knitting socks for the fighting men. Gertrude helped the Red Cross with publicity.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Gertrude Chandler Warner"
by .
Copyright © 1997 Mary Ellen Ellsworth.
Excerpted by permission of Albert Whitman & Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter One Growing Up On Main Street,
Chapter Two Creating A Life,
Chapter Three Focusing On Writing,
Chapter Four Enjoying Community,
Image Gallery,
Afterword,