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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]All of the books I read as a kid featured orphans as main characters, I’m now realizing. Boxcar kids. Secret Garden. BFG. Anne of Green Gables. Heidi. And on and on.[/quote]

LOL - yes same. All of these. Or terrible parents -- Matilda. [/quote]

It's a trope in children's lit for a reason. When the parents are dead, or so bad they aren't involved, or absent (see the many books where a parent is deployed during a war) then the children have reasons to do things your kids and mine probably wouldn't do: live in a Boxcar, spend summers between Hogwarts terms all over the place, live with crochety old relatives in the mountains, and so on. Parents make the world a safer place, and in literature kids want a chance to live a little more on the edge.

It's an interesting question if you can write a book where the parents are major players, but the kids still have crazy, just-scary-enough adventures.[/quote]

My childhood favorite version of this was kids lost in the wilderness. [i]Hatchet[/i], [i]Island of the Blue Dolphins[/i], that kind of thing.[/quote]

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