Book #83: Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner (Boxcar Children #2)

Dane LOVED the first Boxcar Children book so much (yay!) that we are moving through the first ones together, slowly but surely. This is the second one in the series--I found a set of the first eight that I bought on Amazon. (There are apparently like 120 of them so there's no way we are going to own all of them... but the first, original set I wanted to get.)

I feel like reading this book, Warner must have been kind of unsure how to recreate the magic and independence and self-reliance that is the main theme of the first book for a sequel. Now that the kids have been rescued and live with their super-wealthy grandfather, they have servants to do everything for them, so what's the fun in that? So she has the grandfather send them to fend for themselves and live on a private island he owns for the summer, because he thinks that would be fun for them. (It's so hilarious that this was considered okay back then--for four children to go live alone on an island unsupervised all summer long.) They forage for food and dig up some surprises and make a museum out of the things they find, and discover an unknown cousin in the process. It definitely wasn't my favorite of the Boxcar Children books, but not bad. Dane loved it and has been making little museums out of his toys and stuffed animals in his bed at night, and is begging to move on to the next one during our reading time.