Highlights from Discussion

    Many homeless children during the Depression
    We were surprised that the airport was a good place for homeless people to live because they could go unnoticed.
    The children had to change clothes before each stop on the train so that they would look presentable.
    The adoption of the children was not formalized right away.  The families were given a trial period with the children.
    Siblings were often split up.
    Not all children were true orphans.  Some were abandoned by their families to make room for other children.  Some were abandoned because they were too expensive to feed on the minimal pay.  In other cases, one parent was deceased and the other parent couldn’t take care of the child because of grief.

We were all amazed at the true pull of emotion while reading the books.

 

Group Discussion Questions

  1. What were your overall opinions of the eight (or more) books that you read?
  2. What do you feel influenced Charles Brace to help these orphan children?
  3. Was there any particular book that you really liked that you would like to share with us and why?
  4. How does discrimination fit into the whole idea of the orphan children?
  5. Do you think that the orphan trains would be beneficial in today’s society?  Why or Why not?
  6. I was concerned about the children who didn’t get picked at the final stop.  Did anyone read about what happened to them?  They must have been humiliated.
  7. What were some of the major issues presented in the books that you read?
  8. The main thing that these children wanted was a loving family.  In the books that you read, did that happen the majority of the time or not?
  9. Who were some of the people in the books that had the “courage to care?”
  10. What were some of the main reasons that there was such an increase in orphan children during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth?
  11. If you were an orphan child during that period of time, what were some of the feelings that you had?
  12. What was the meaning of waif, and did the children appreciate being called this?
  13. Do you feel that society was discriminatory to these orphan children? Why or Why not?
  14. Regarding your answer above, do you think that in today’s world, society has the same outlook on the poor?  Why or Why not?

 

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