Charles Tang

Charles Tang is an illustrator best known for drawing the pictures in many of the Boxcar Children Mysteries published by Albert Whitman & Company in the early and mid 1990s.

The Boxcar Children series was created by the American teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner. Her original The Box-Car Children was published by Rand McNally in 1924, and Albert Whitman reissued a shorter, revised version in 1942. Warner wrote only the first 19 stories; the many later titles were written by other authors and carry the line "Created by Gertrude Chandler Warner". Albert Whitman remained the series publisher until 2023, after which Random House Children's Books took it over.

Open Library lists Tang alongside Warner on a long run of these later mysteries. They include The Disappearing Friend Mystery and The Animal Shelter Mystery (1991); The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo, The Mystery Girl, The Mystery in the Snow, The Mystery of the Singing Ghost and The Mystery Cruise (1992); The Mystery at the Dog Show, The Mystery Horse and The Mystery of the Lost Village (1993); The Mystery of the Hidden Beach, The Canoe Trip Mystery, The Mystery of the Missing Cat, The Mystery of the Purple Pool and The Ghost Ship Mystery (1994); and The Chocolate Sundae Mystery, The Mystery of the Stolen Boxcar, The Mystery of the Stolen Music, The Dinosaur Mystery and The Mystery of the Hot Air Balloon (1995). The Mystery of the Stolen Boxcar, number 49 in the series, was issued by Albert Whitman as a 116-page hardback in 1995 with Tang named as illustrator.

For collectors. The titles he illustrated circulated in several forms: Albert Whitman hardbacks, Scholastic paperbacks, and library bindings from firms such as Turtleback and Tandem Library. When describing a first edition, check that the title page and copyright page name Albert Whitman rather than a reprint or school book club publisher.