Orphan Train Sparknotes

In Orphan Train, by Christina Kline, the reader follows Molly as she helps an older woman, Vivian, clean her attic. Through her time cleaning, she hears stories and sees evidence of what happened throughout Vivian’s childhood. The book follows Vivian’s complete orphan story, while only really showing Molly’s current story as she is still an orphan. Vivian goes through multiple hardships throughout her journey including assault, her husband's death, and struggling to find a true home. Molly feels out of place in her current home and gets into trouble. Molly is eventually able to move in with Vivian and help her reconnect with her family. Through each other's stories, Vivian and Molly come together to give each other the homes they had dreamed

Many children, including Vivian, were abused in the homes they were put in. When Vivian told people about Mr. Grote’s assault, they thought she was misunderstanding the situation. She was ignored and overlooked because she was an orphan, and finding a new home for her would be a lot of work. These situations all show the horrible and traumatizing situations the orphans were put in. Since the reader gets the opportunity to see Molly’s side of the story, the reader knows that similar things still happen today. Orphans are still overlooked and abused, and the Orphan Train shows the reader what circumstances these orphans are and were dealing with. This book’s ability to educate the reader on such a sensitive and serious topic is one reason why it deserves to be awarded. The novel, Orphan Train, deserves literary merit for its attention to the time period, and it deserves merit for showing how the events during this time affect the orphans. The original setting of Vivian’s journey is historic, as the orphan train was an actual thing. Orphans were put on trains to try to find a home. They were starved and bossed around, similar to how they were in the