chunk: The Boxcar Children tells the story of four orphaned children: Henry, Jessie (or Jess), Violet, and Benny. In the original 1924 version of the tale, the children are orphaned in the first few pages; in the heavily revised and simplified 1942 revision, they have evidently been orphaned for some time.
  When a baker and his wife learn that the children are orphans, they make plans the children object to. In the 1924 edition, they plan to send the children, who live in a house next door to the bakery, to live with their grandfather, but the children have been brought up to fear their grandfather, whom they have never met, because he did not approve of their parents' marriage. In the 1942 revision, the children are already homeless and wandering at the start of the story. The baker and his wife plan to take in the three elder children, who are big enough to be useful in the bakery, but to send little Benny to a Children's Home.