In The Boxcar Children: The Mystery of the Lost Village, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny visit "a Navajo Indian reservation." Violet exclaims "A Navajo reservation!" (p. 2).
That is the first red flag as I start reading this story. There is only one Navajo Nation, and only one Navajo reservation. A Navajo child who pays attention to how Navajo people are portrayed will notice that error right away.
The Boxcar Children and their grandfather fly over the Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon. They land in New Mexico. When they land, they take a taxi to a group of houses on the reservation.
Several red flags there!
They fly over the Mississippi River. Fine. But the Grand Canyon? Nope! Not unless the pilot was lost.
Here's another thing. They land at the airport, which is probably Albuquerque International Airport, which is miles and miles and miles away from the Navajo Reservation... and they go there by taxi?! I know their grandfather is wealthy, so maybe cost is not a big deal, but goodness!
Check out this image. It shows the Navajo Reservation (it spans four states):
Point A is Albuquerque. Point B is Gallup. Distance? 140 miles.
At that group of houses the taxi pulls up to, the Lightfeather children, Amy and Joe, greet them. They get into the taxi, too, and direct the driver to their home. Once at the Lightfeather home, Amy shows Violet and Jessie where they'll sleep (Amy's room). They talk at length about the colorful Navajo blankets on the beds. They've got animal designs on them: an eagle, a deer, a turtle, a hawk, and a turtle. Amy tells the girls that each one, by design, always has a tiny mistake in the design because Navajo women believe that if it is perfect, it would offend the gods.
More red flags!
Navajo blankets being used as blankets on a bed? I'll have to do some checking on that... They're very expensive and are usually more like wall hangings than something you'd wrap yourself up in. And the way the kids talk about the animals on them... well, I can't imagine them. If you do an image search on Navajo blankets, you'll see what I mean. Birds--yes, but all those animals? Not so much. Possible, but not plausible.
Later that evening, the kids meet Kinowok, "the oldest man on the reservation" (p. 14). He's a storyteller. He tells them about a tribal village nearby, just off the reservation, that "the earth had swallowed" up when the people abandoned it during a drought.
To me, that sounds like the things said about Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon... all those sites that are the ancestral homes of Pueblo peoples.
Henry says "A lost village" and talks about archaeology. He wants to find that site and start digging. Mrs. Lightfeather studied archaeology in college and spent two summers working on digs, so she offers to give them some tips. She tells the kids that students have tried to find this particular village but so far, nobody has found it. Once they start digging, they find an arrowhead and a "bright orange" piece of pottery. Later, Mrs. Lightfeather tells them a real estate developer wants to build there, and that they only have two weeks to dig. If they can find the village, it will stop the real estate developer. Sites like that are protected by the law, she says.
More red flags!
If Mrs. Lightfeather is Navajo and has studied archaeology, she'd probably have a different response. Such finds are rare and must be handled with great care.
It is possible but not plausible, to find a perfect pot, and possible but not plausible for Mrs. Lightfeather's reaction, too. She sounds more white than Navajo!
One day, Amy takes the girls to the stable where her horse is. While they're there, a "tall blonde" man enters the stables and startles the girls. He tells them he's a genealogist and that the council has given him permission to look through their records.
Amy assumes this means he is Navajo and asks him about it. He says that yes, he is part Navajo but mostly white. He spots the necklace Amy is wearing and asks her if the stone is an opal. She tells him it is turquoise. After he leaves, she tells the girls that, if he is really Navajo, he would know the stone is turquoise, because of its significance to the Navajo people. There's a legend about it, she says. Violet wants to know what the story is, and Amy starts out with "I guess you'd call it a fairy tale."
With that line, I am going to stop reading. There's too much wrong. The Mystery of the Lost Village -- though a work of fiction, is so deeply flawed that I do not recommend it. According to WorldCat, it is in over 1200 libraries. It is available in Braille and as an e-book. Is it in yours? I hope not.
What books do you remember most fondly from childhood?
This book was very important to me as a child. It seemed a great handbook should I ever pursue any of the hundreds of threats I made to run away. I adored how everything had a purpose and such order could be made in the wild.
I was just thinking of it yesterday as I read SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS. I would be surprised if Pennypacker didn’t have Violet, Benny, Jesse, and Henry echoing through Stella and Angel’s summer.
Thank you for this great endorsement of The Boxcar Children. That one book has touched so many lives and generations of families. And, everyone, please do visit our museum in Putnam Ct.
The Boxcar Children series got really boring after the kids were safe with their rich grandfather. This book, the first one, though? Still love it. Will be reading it to my children. The four kids being independent, taking care of each other, their innovations … they were my heroes for years. Well, Henry and Jessie, anyway. Violet and Benny always struck me as drips.
My good friend urged me to read The Boxcar Children (with the wonderful second cover shown here). I never read any sequels, but the story of that first one stuck with me. When my first son learned to read, I got him several in the series. They are perfect for a kid reading early, because the stories are gentle, despite the higher reading level. Though he did tire of them before he got them all read.
I loved this one, too. I read the whole series (and there were a lot of books in that series); I still remember that getting some of was my first time using interlibrary loan was to get some of the later ones. It was an odd shift though, from the “kids surviving on their own” of the first one to the low-stakes mysteries of the later books in the series. But they may be part of the reason that mysteries have remained my favorite genre fiction.
I have fond memories of my first grade teacher reading this book outloud to our class.
I think I have a Boxcar Children cookbook somewhere . . . This book and Enid Blyton’s Famous Five “Five Run Away to Danger” along with “My Side of the Mountain” by Jean Craighead George were my three favorite books about kids running away from home and living on their own to some degree. My mother read this to us when I was probably seven or eight. I went on to read some of the mysteries, but really preferred just the first book.