The Boxcar Children Beginning: The Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm by Patricia MacLachlan Read Free Book Online Page B

person.
    Ms. Warner was an elementary school teacher in Putnam for many years, and she often shared her stories with her students including her stories about the Aldens. I had the chance to meet with some of her former students during my visit to
    Connecticut, and they spoke glowingly about her kindness to them during their early school years.
    I hope that this story of the Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm sets the scene for all the stories that follow.
    —Patricia MacLachlan

Acknowledgements
    I’d like to thank Fred Hedenberg and Barbara Scalise for their wealth of information about the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum in Putnam, Connecticut. Thanks also to Bob Viens, who lives in Ms. Warner’s grandfather’s house in Putnam.
    I appreciate the enthusiasm of Ms. Warner’s students from 1942 and their warm memories about her. They are John Champeau, Roger Franklin, Edeo Clark, Julia Duquette, Dorothy Defillipo, and Sandra Ames. Also, Geraldine Tetreault, Eileen Bourque, and John Millard Alvord.

A Biography of Patricia MacLachlan
    Patricia MacLachlan (b. 1938) is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books for young readers, including the Newbery Medal–winning novel Sarah, Plain and Tall.
    Although a longtime resident of Massachusetts, MacLachlan was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and has long identified with the Great Plains states. She moved east when she was a child, but for years carried with her a leather pouch full of Wyoming dirt to remind her of her roots. Later, she attended the University of Connecticut, where her father served as the director of curriculum.
    MacLachlan tapped into that love of the plains in the mid-1980s, when she began writing Sarah, Plain and Tall . Set on the prairie in the late nineteenth century, it tells the story of a mail-order bride named Sarah who moves west from Maine to raise the family of a man she has never met.
    The novel was a great success, winning the Newbery Medal in 1986. It spawned four sequels, as well as three feature films starring Christopher Walken and Glenn Close. It is now regarded as a modern classic of middle-grade fiction. The most recent novel in the series, Grandfather’s Dance , was published in 2006.
    MacLachlan’s other early novels include The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt (1988), Unclaimed Treasures (1984), and Arthur, for the Very First Time (1980), which won the Golden Kite Award for fiction. More recently, she has won acclaim for her sophisticated presentation of familial love and loss in Kindred Souls (2012) and Waiting for the Magic (2011).
    Aside from middle-grade novels, MacLachlan has written dozens of picture books, beginning with The Sick Day (1979). In 2003, she and her daughter Emily Charest co-wrote Painting the Wind , a story about a boy and his dog that was inspired by Emily’s work with rescue animals. They continued writing books about canines, including Once I Ate a Pie (2006), a picture book about daily life as seen from a dog’s point of view. In 2011 she published Lala Salama , a lullaby set in Tanzania.
    MacLachlan’s most recent novel is The Boxcar Children Beginning: The Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm , a prequel to Gertrude Chandler Warner’s famous Boxcar Children series, which explores what life was like for the four Alden children before they struck out on their own.
    MacLachlan lives with her husband and two border terriers in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.
    MacLachlan at roughly age three, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The bonnet she wears was passed down to her from her mother.
    MacLachlan, shown here at age six, started studying the piano at age five and describes taking lessons from a “fabulous quirky composer/musician who had at least three grand pianos.” MacLachlan played the piano for years before taking up the cello and playing with a group of friends in a string quartet.
    MacLachlan at age eight, around the time she started writing stories.
    MacLachlan’s piece for the Washington Post describes her