The Boxcar Children

Gertrude Chandler Warner's series has been a first-mystery gateway for young readers since 1942, when four orphaned siblings, Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny, set up house in an abandoned boxcar before settling with their grandfather. The early titles here, like The Yellow House Mystery and Mountain Top Mystery, established the formula: resourceful children, a gentle puzzle, no real menace.

The later books, many written long after Warner's death by other hands, send the Aldens further afield to dog shows, mummy exhibits and haunted clock towers, and even into lightly spooky territory with The Zombie Project. There is a cookbook too, fitting for a series that began with kids learning to feed themselves. The appeal stays constant: independence, teamwork and small mysteries solved without grown-ups taking over.

The The Boxcar Children franchise spans 25 books in the CrossBinge catalog.