Nostalgia Post: Animorphs—K.A. Applegate & The Boxcar Children—Gertrude Chandler Warner

  

About a year ago, I posted about the grown up reading challenge that I was doing with some friends. I’ve been steadily working my way through the stack of books, though I admit I’ve been a bit distracted by various other things, like the abysmal state of the world and other books. However, I recently read the first two books in both the Animorphs series and The Boxcar Children series as my nostalgia/’90s books throwbacks. Though The Boxcar Children books were written well before the ‘90s, they were still considered part of the category because WE read them in the ‘90s.

Animorphs 

So first up, Animorphs by K.A. Applegate. I loved this series when I was in elementary school. That also happened to be pretty close to the time that the television series was on, so I was reading them and watching the series at the same time.

The first book is The Invasion, narrated by Jake, and the second book, The Visitor, is narrated by Rachel.

If you don’t know, a little bit more background/information about the Animorphs series. Evil aliens called Yeerks invade Earth in order to take over the planet. The Yeerks are shaped like slugs and crawl into the ears of creatures, including humans, to take them over. When they’re not in people’s heads, they live in underground pools, and have to go back into those pools every few days to regenerate. A dying Andalite, a good alien, crash lands on Earth in front of five preteen kids and gives them its power: to transform into any animal. In this first book, they take a trip to the zoo where Cassie’s mom works, to get some initial animals to add to their morphing menagerie. They also find out that some of their family members and school administrators have already been taken over by the Yeerks, so they start gathering intel in their morphed forms. The Yeerks just think that they’re other Andalites, instead of human children – which, you know, fair assumption – so the kids are safe in that regard, at least for these first two books.

These were pretty fun to come back to. Yeah, they’re definitely non-challenging books, and I finished each one in maybe an hour? But the nostalgia is strong. I loved the references to technology that dates it so extremely, like in the first book when Jake says, “Marco and I took off toward my house again trying to act normal. We talked about the baseball season. We talked about who was going to slaughter who in Dead Zone 5, which is this CD game we were going to play on my computer.” Bahahaha. A CD game? Remember those days? I played so many games on the computer that required CDs. I miss those too.

There were definitely some things I didn’t remember about the books, possibly because I read them before I was super analytical, and possibly because we’re more cognizant of societal issues these days, I think. There’s a lot of focus on people’s appearances and bodies, and a lot of subtle shaming of specifically young women’s bodies. Like, in the second book, which is told from Rachel’s point of view, she’s talking about her gymnastics class. She says this, "It's not one of those real serious gymnastics classes. I mean, none of us is going to be going to the Olympics. When I started out, I had dreams of being the next Shannon Miller. But then I started to grow...Most of us in the class are too tall or too heavy to ever be serious gymnasts. We do it for fu and for exercise." (29) Rachel also talks about a girl in her PE class: "Melissa Chapman was in the locker room changing into the leotard when I came in. She's the exception to the rule in our class. She does look like a gymnast. She's small and thin, even though she doesn't starve herself like some fools who want to get into gymnastics. She has pale gray eyes and pale blonde hair and pale skin. She looks like one of those solemn elves in a Tolkien book. At first glance she looks delicate, but when you look a little closer, you see strength there, too." (29) Just none of that seems necessary to say. You can tell that Applegate was maybe even trying to be complimentary, or sending a message about being healthy without starving yourself, but it's just pretty hamfisted and ineffective.

But I do love the way that the aliens describe animals that they’re encountering for the first time. AND I forgot that the book morphs, and has a flipbook at the bottom of the pages! Here's an animated version of the transformation from the first book.

So those were great. Quick reads, basically like popcorn, don’t require a whole lot of analysis or thought while reading them. A good break from some super academic, dense things that I’ve been reading as well.

The Boxcar Children 

Then we’ve got The Boxcar Children. I was reading these in probably kindergarten and first grade, well before I was reading the Animorphs series. The Boxcar Children series was first published in the mid 1920s. 

In the first book we're introduced to the orphans and it's basically all downhill from there.

This is the one that started it all. These four kids, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are orphans. The only family they know about is their grandfather, who they have been taught to fear for some unknown reason. In this first book, which was revamped from the original 1920s version in the 1940s, the children have been orphaned for a while and are trying to survive. They find a boxcar, which they make into their home. Henry, the eldest child, wanders into a nearby town and does some yard work for Dr. Moore who pays him for his labors, money which Henry then uses to buy food for the other siblings. Pretty early on in that relationship, Dr. Moore follows Henry home and sees that they are all living in the boxcar but doesn’t do anything about it. By mere happenstance, the children’s grandfather lives one town over, and holds a race every year and gives an award to the winner. Henry runs in the race, and gets to meet the man, not knowing it’s his grandfather, and thinks him very nice. Dr. Moore is pretty sure he knows of the familial connection, but doesn’t want to spook the kids by trying to foist them off on a relative they don’t know. At the end of the book, Violet gets very sick and the kids take her to Dr. Moore, who calls the kids grandfather. They all agree he’s a nice old man so they decide to go live with him. What a happy ending.

It’s pretty clear that these were written in the 1940s. I don’t think that we’ve become too politically correct – which is really just code for polite and respectful of other people’s feelings and identities – but I do we’ve become more thoughtful in the ways that we write. When talking about the race that Henry is competing in, this is what we’re told: "Every year the boys were in training for the races. And not only boys but men also, thin and fat, and girls trained for Field Day. There were prized for all kinds of races--running and swimming and jumping. But the best one was a foot race, called a free-for-all, because anyone coud run in it. Mr. Alden gave a prize of twenty-five dollars and a silver cup to the winner of the free-for-all. Sometimes a boy won the race, sometimes a girl. Once a fat man had won it." (102) Oh really, a fat man? He won one whole time? Crazy.

It’s also pretty clear that these kids are stupid privileged. Yes, they are orphans. That sucks. But we get a pretty clear idea of just how privileged they are in the second book. It’s called Surprise Island. In it, their grandpa basically gives them an island that he owns, and they stay there all summer with basically no supervision. He also offers to pay for all of the supplies they might need.

"You'll have to cook," replied Mr. Alden, "if you want to eat. I will give you some money for dishes and things. You must tell me how much money you need, but don't make it too much." 

All the children laughed a little, because even Benny knew that their grandfather had enough money to buy anything they wanted. (10-11)

Ah, the laughter that comes of never having to worry about your next dollar. Such a sweet, innocent kind of laughter.

They return to their boxcar "roots" every once in a while in a very "Gwyneth Paltrow attempting to survive on food benefit budgets by buying literally the most expensive organic food, and then, like the multimillionaire that she is, being able to just go back to eating however she wants four days later and claiming to have her perspective changed" manner.

We also see some perpetuation of the traditional gender roles, and in fact Violet even feels guilty about not helping when she finds that she’s basically a prodigy on the violin and wants to practice instead.

The island is a surprise in more ways than one when they find that the caretaker of the island year round has a visitor, a young man who has amnesia. Turns out, he’s another long-lost relative! What a coincidence.

Overall, very wholesome and simple.

So that was my foray into nostalgic books. I might read some more in the Animorphs series for funsies, but don’t know how much deeper I’d want to get into The Boxcar Children at this point. They are just so many other things to read, and even though these take less than an hour to read, it’s still less than an hour that I could spend on more complex books.