books about orphans
December 10, 2008

In answer to a question asked by my nephew, who is a fan of Harry Potter, The Baudelaire�s, and other great contemporary orphans in literature�here are some of my favorite books about orphans.
For as long as I�ve been able to read (41 years!), I�ve loved books about orphans. Specifically, the old-timey ones written in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And lucky me�there�s an awful lot of them out there.

In a lot of these, the orphan is usually sent to live with relations they�ve never met�some of my favorites in this vein are �Heidi� (1880), by Johanna Spyri, Louisa May Alcott�s �Eight Cousins� (1875), �Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm�, by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin(1903), "The Secret Garden" (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Eleanor H. Porter�s �Pollyanna� (1913), and Dorothy Canfield Fisher�s �Understood Betsy� (1916).

In these, someone is transformed by the love of another. In Heidi, Rebecca, and Pollyanna, the love of the child melts the heart of the bitter, unfeeling relation. In Eight Cousins and Betsy, the love of the relations is what helps Rose and Betsy to become good and kind and brave and strong.

Frances Hodgson Burnett had it all ways with �The Secret Garden��it is the titular garden that succeeds in healing the warped and withered bodies and minds of the orphaned Mary, and the Uncle who took her in�and throwing in her cousin Colin for good measure!

Then there is the �taken up by a mysterious benefactor� kind�favorites here include the grand-daddy of them all-- Great Expectations� (1860)--but Dickens is pretty much his own, one-man sub-genre of orphan novels. My other faves are "Sara Crewe / A Little Princess" (1905) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and 1912�s �Daddy-Long-Legs�, by Jean Webster.