By Gertrude Chandler Warner
Four orphaned siblings make a home out of an abandoned red boxcar and run their own little household until a grandfather they've never met tracks them down.
Four children have lost their parents and have nowhere to go, and they are set on staying together. One rainy night they stumble on an abandoned boxcar deep in the woods and decide to make it home. They sweep it out, find cracked dishes at the dump, dam a brook to keep the milk cold, and cook their meals over a fire. Henry, the oldest at fourteen, walks into town for odd jobs from a kind doctor. Most of the book is simply the four of them building a real life out of nothing, with a quiet thread of mystery running underneath: a rich grandfather they've been told to fear, who has actually been searching for them all along.
There's no magic and almost nothing to be afraid of here, just the steady pleasure of watching capable children take care of themselves. The chapters are short, the sentences are plain, and there's a warm forward pull as the boxcar slowly turns into a home. That makes it an easy first chapter book for a child who's just leaving picture books behind. And if they fall for it, the series runs well past a hundred more books, so you won't be hunting for the next one any time soon.