The Boxcar Children

The Mystery of the Mummy’s Curse by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2002.

The Alden children are at the museum to get a sneak preview of the new Egyptian exhibit because the man in charge of the exhibit is the son of one of their grandfather’s friends.  When he shows them the mummy that will be the centerpiece of the exhibit, one of his assistants accidentally falls off a stepladder and breaks her ankle.  The museum personnel joke that it’s the “mummy’s curse,” although they quickly reassure the children that they don’t believe in curses.

With the opening of the exhibit coming soon, there’s a lot of work to do, including cleaning up the exhibit hall where it will be set up.  Losing the assistant has left the museum short-handed, so the Aldens volunteer to help with the cleaning and setting up.

However, the children notice other odd things about the exhibit when they’re helping to clean up.  They hear strange noises, as if someone were creeping around the off-limits areas where the artifacts are being stored and the exhibit getting set up.  Then, some of the artifacts that they noticed when they were first introduced to the exhibit disappear.  When they check to see what else is missing, they realize that some of the artifacts they’ve seen aren’t even listed on the official roster.  Jessie tries making her own list of artifacts in the exhibit, since the master list isn’t reliable, but someone steals it.

Who is stealing from the Egyptian exhibit?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I enjoyed the mystery. I was pretty sure that I knew early on who was responsible for the thefts, but mysteries involving museums, mummies, and stolen artifacts are my cup of tea!

I did think, as I was reading this, that few museums would let random kids help set up an exhibit like this, including valuable artifacts, even if most of what they were doing is just cleaning up. In the story, the eldest of the Alden children is 14, and I’ve done enough volunteer work to know that there are age limits and training requirements for certain volunteer tasks. There are really only two reasons why kids like the Aldens would be doing this. One, the requirements of the story: having the kids help set up an exhibit of Egyptian artifacts is exciting, something that plenty of kids would find fascinating, and it allows them to be in the right place to notice the thefts. Two, Grandfather Alden is rich: if the children’s grandfather wasn’t rich and well-connected, the Aldens wouldn’t be doing most of what they do in the stories. The second reason isn’t as charming as the first, and it never occurred to me when I was younger that the Aldens are actually very privileged to be in the position to do the things they do and meet the people they meet, but they are.

I wouldn’t say that the knowledge spoils the story for me, but it did make me stop and think. Sometimes, when adults, especially older adults, look back on books like the Boxcar children series, they talk about how independent the kids in these stories are and how willing to work, but the truth is that, in most of the stories, the kids’ grandfather sets them up with the opportunities for volunteer work or independence that the children have. The kids didn’t get this volunteer position because it’s an extension of special classes any of them are taking in history or archaeology or because they’ve done lower-level volunteer work for the museum before, working their way up, or because they applied for the position. They got it because of someone their grandfather knows. The Alden children are still willing to take advantage of opportunities that come their way and work hard at them and learn whatever they can, but when you think about it, it’s not quite the same as people who have to prove themselves and their merits first just to get the opportunity to do the same thing. So, I enjoy the story for the fun and mystery, but thinking about it now, as an adult who has done volunteer work for museums as well, I’m not quite so impressed with the way other, older adults compare the characters to real kids of non-rich, non-connected parents.

There are still volunteer opportunities for youths who want to get involved in museum work, but most of them require the kids to be older teens. One of the reasons for the age requirements is that there can be liability issues if someone gets hurt on the job, but people who hire volunteers also want to know about the skills the volunteers have, what kind of training they’ve had or need, and how much they can alreay do unsupervised. Rules can vary by location and position, but in the places I’ve been, kids under 14 are usually required to be supervised by an adult, 18 or over. Often, teens who do those sorts of jobs have already proved their skills or worked their way up in some way, applying for volunteer jobs and discussing their skills, taking related classes, being part of museum programs for younger children before, and/or volunteering in tandem with a parent first. The same is true of other places where I’ve volunteered, like animal shelters. So, the kids who seem more independent are that way because the adults in their lives took them through the preparation and training first and helped them connect with people who could take them further. This is a fun mystery story, but just understand that real children often aren’t like kids in mystery adventure books because they are real people in the real world, where circumstances are different from the ones in fiction. Real life has rules and regulations, and not everybody has a rich grandfather or family friends who are willing to treat them as special exceptions to the rules. If you want to see the kids around you get involved in a cause like this and gain some skills, the best way to go about it is to get involved yourself, both with the cause and with the lives of the kids, and give them the training and knowledge they need to go further on their own. Things like this don’t just happen on their own.