Top life changing books
22 March 2025
Top Books That Changed My Life If there is anything we know for sure at AQUILA HQ, it’s that books
From Harry Potter to Alex Rider, where would children’s stories be without orphans? Katherine Rundell – winner of the Blue Peter Book Award for best story – examines this popular archetype.
There are good reasons for the wealth of fantastic, gutsy orphans in children’s stories. Parents, with their concern for safety and the law, do tend to put the brakes on adventure. Without parents to protect them, enforce order and inflict grown-up rules on a storyline, orphans are free to run wild and live large and daring lives. Orphans are allowed to make their own rules, fight their own battles and even invent their own food.
To a writer, orphans are walking possibilities. They attract trouble, and luck and magic. They might turn out to be a lost prince, an Egyptian king, a wizard. My book Rooftoppers is thick with orphans and near-orphans, because the books I loved most as a child were the ones where children were free to act without paying attention to the dull concerns of the adult world.
Mowgli’s parents are eaten by a tiger, and he is taken in by a family of wise and friendly wolves. Freed from the restraints of civilisation, he is allowed to consort with haughty panthers and anxious bears. The Disney film is, of course, fantastic, but the book is even better.
When his parents die in a boating accident Cat is sent to Chrestomanci Castle with his ruthless sister Gwendolyn, where he discovers he is a powerful enchanter. This is a story about courage, wit and dressing gowns more than it is about orphans, but it is a wonderful book, and Harry Potter owes a great deal to it.
Anne is an orphan hungry for love. In her quest for companionship she does nothing by halves: ‘We must join hands – so. It ought to be over running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Diana Barry, as long as the Sun and Moon shall endure. Now you say it and put my name in.’ Her passion is infectious.
Alex’s orphan status means that there is nobody to tell him to be home for supper, to hold on tight or wash his face. Stories in which children take on adult jobs require dead or absent parents. As a child spy, like Kim in Rudyard Kipling’s novel 100 years before it, Alex needs to be free of worrying mothers and fathers in order to get the job done.
Harry is an orphan whose destiny is marked out visibly on his face. His parents’ death gives him a purpose and a passion, his inherited wealth gives him independence, his friends and protectors give him courage, and his hundreds of millions of readers (that’s you) give him a place in history.
Lyra believes she is an orphan, and has the courage, independence and spirit of one. Part guttersnipe, part duchess, she has the ability to attract strangers and warriors, and gathers together a glorious band of defenders: witches, armoured bears, aeronauts.
Sophie is snatched from her orphanage window and launched into a world of frobscottle and snozzcumbers, giants and dreams. She is of the quietly sensible brand of orphan; resilient, quick-witted and kind, and the malaproping BFG is the most magnificent friend a child could hope for.
The world of Pauline, Petrova and Posy is warm and wise. Their concerns are domestic, but their souls are heroic. They realise that their status as orphans means that whatever they achieve in life, they achieve on their own terms, and that potential is at the root of all orphan stories.
When you really think about it, orphans in fiction actually have very little in common with their real-life counterparts. In real life a child whose parents have died is not given free reign to do whatever they want. Instead they are usually taken in by a member of their extended family. If this can’t happen for one reason or another they will be cared for either by a charitable organisation or the state. It’s true that they might end up in an orphanage, in a care home, in foster care or being adopted but it definitely does not mean they are free from rules or that they are not cared about. A real-life orphan might be brave and independent but he or she is not a magical creature. They can’t become a spy, for example, any more than can a child with both parents living.
When a story character fulfils a certain set of expectations we call them an archetype. There are countless archetypes, and you’ll meet them wherever a story is taking shape. In real life a princess can be anything she likes, but in literature, a princess archetype often wears pretty dresses, is kind to animals, is gentle, graceful and dances beautifully. Turning that archetype upside down can be fun and create the basis for a brilliant story.
How many archetypes can you think of?
What kind of characteristics would you expect of them?
How could you play with those expectations to form the basis of the story?
Try these on for size:
Can you think of a famous children’s book character that lives with both parents and has a happy and stable home life? How does the writer make sure the main character can still get into enough trouble to create a story? After all, without a troublesome situation to solve, there can be no adventure!
You see? Instant ideas for stories!
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Words: Tanya Akrofi. Illustration: Thiago Limón
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