Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third-Person (Omniscient)
The book's third-person narrator is an unknown speaker whose old-fashioned phrasing and simple language lend the narration a sort of singsong, storybook quality. From a remove, the narrator tells us about what the Boxcar Children are doing. Spoiler alert: It's almost always some sort of work—and they're almost always pretty stoked to be doing it.
But, our narrator also has some insight into what the children think and feel, peeping into the characters' minds so we understand them better. For example, when Jessie tells Henry that Benny went to sleep with his hand touching his new cart, Henry laughs. Jessie probably thinks that he's laughing at Benny, but we know what he's really laughing about because the narrator tells us: "Henry laughed, too, but he laughed at himself, because he was going to sleep with his new hammer under his pillow" (7.90). He might be playing dad, but Henry's still just a kid who gets excited about new stuff.
It's also worth noting that the narrator can predict the future, giving him or her an almost godlike quality. When Jessie frets about their food supplies at the end of chapter 8, the narrator knows exactly what will happen next, even though Jessie does not:
"Tomorrow we'll have to eat bread and milk," said Jessie.
But when tomorrow came, the children had more than bread and milk, as you will soon see. (8.55-8.56)
Similarly, at the end of chapter 12, when the children's grandfather invites them to visit his house, the narrator knows something the children do not: "They did not know what a beautiful house it was and what good times they were going to have in it" (12.100). By teasing the events to come in the next chapter, the narrator holds our interest as we read while also making sure things never get too tense.