Between 1854 and 1929, an estimated 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children in the United States, most of them from the East Coast, traveled by train to towns and cities across the nation and were made available for adoption. Andrea Warren documents the personal stories of eight children who rode the Orphan Trains, noting that all of the surviving Orphan Train riders are aging, making the task of recording their experiences now a critical one. Each of these eight was fortunate to end up in a loving home, although there were a few frightening starts. Some people saw the Orphan Train children as a source of cheap labor, and there are many known cases of abuse and neglect. But the adult agents cared for the children on the train journey and tried to check on each child, both in the days following a placement and again a year later. Those visits made all the difference to several of these children, who were removed from their first placements and later ended up in loving families. Each of these riders felt some sense of abandonment over the course of her or his life. Some have been able to learn about their birth parents and to make peace with their emotions about the adoption. Others have not. Photographs of each individual as a child and today accompany these personal histories. Warren has also written about the Orphan Trains in the equally compelling Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story (Houghton Mifflin, 1996). (Ages 9–12)

Listen to child orphans as they share their memories of transition and adventure, disappointment and loneliness, but ultimately of the joy of belonging to their own new families.

They were "throwaway" kids, living in the streets or in orphanages and foster homes. Then Charles Loring Brace, a young minister working with the poor in New York City, started the Children's Aid Society and devised a plan to give homeless children a chance to find families to call their own.

Thus began an extraordinary migration of American children. Between 1854 and 1929, an estimated 200,000 children, mostly from New York and other cities of the eastern United States, ventured forth to other states on a journey of hope.

Andrea Warren has shared the stories of some of these orphan train riders here, including those of Betty, who found a fairy tale life in a grand hotel; Nettie Evans and her twin, Nellie, who were rescued from their first abusive placement and taken in by a new, kindhearted family who gave them the love they had hoped for; brothers Howard and Fred, who remained close even though they were adopted into different families; and Edith, who longed to know the secrets of her past.

"This is powerful nonfiction for classroom and personal reading and for discussion." (School Library Journal starred review)