Boxcar Children

Our current independent reading project for English class is an annotated bibliography of children's books. (For those ignorant, an annotated bibliography is a list of citations with helpful little comments injected after each.) To ease us into the process of annotated bibliographing, and to have the project completed in a few weeks, we are completing it with children's picture books, as opposed to weightier volumes.

Of course, because I seem to have poor planning capabilities, I didn't do my project with children's picture books. Instead, I chose a theme that required the use of children's chapter books. Granted, I can read a children's chapter book in 20-40 minutes, but when you must read 15 of them, cite them, and then write an essay on them, the process becomes rather lengthy. 

Furthermore, children's chapter books are some of the dullest literature ever conceived. While lovely for children, with their stunted cognitive processes and lack of critical thinking, they are a dull and frustrating genre to read for anyone over the age of 12 (who has a brain, at any rate). 

For instance, the Boxcar Children. Decent writing, for a children's chapter book, I suppose, but lordy-fricking-lou. The Alden children are some of the least interesting characters ever invented. They have no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever. One could just as easily name them 1, 2, 3, and 4 and have nothing change significantly. Yet, despite their inherent dullness, the Aldens have access to all sorts of exciting adventures.
For instance, in The Mystery in the Sand (the book I read), the Aldens discover a locket on the beach, and determine that it belongs to a reclusive woman that lives in a creepy, castle-like house. As they try to learn more about this woman, they discover that she lives with 10 cats and another woman! (for whom she keeps house. Riiiiight.). The other woman is evidently a cat-obsessed artist and extreme introvert. The two women often take long walks on the beach at midnight, wearing men's clothing. And, this being the late 60's, that actually means something.

Okay, I'm just going to take a wild leap here, but I think this should be obvious to any modern person who reads this book: They are totally lesbians.
I mean really, think about it for a second. Two women, living alone together, with ten cats. Wearing men's clothing.
I mean, really. Not to play off of lesbian stereotypes, except that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm sorry if I'm not being PC. But really, think about it.
Furthermore, (and I am really reading into it here), the fact that they shun society so much could totally be indicative of the fear they have of judgment/ostracism from the not-really-progressive people of the era. Am I right, or what?

Okay, okay, I'm almost definitely wrong. There's no way Gertrude Chandler Warner meant it that way. But I've got to keep myself sane somehow, wading through all these blasted children's books. It's killing me slowly, like a degenerative brain illness.