To ask why it’s so hard to find a children’s book without a dead parent or pity for only children?!

[SashaPearce]

Trying to choose a book as a birthday present for a friend’s daughter. She’s turning 9 and is an only child. Thought it would be easy as I loved reading and still own lots of my favourites but finding it really hard! Several I feel like I’m having to rule out because they include a brief conversation where characters with multiple siblings are pitying an only child, ‘isn’t it sad, they must be so lonely’. Find this infuriating! I guess it’s an index of how unusual one child families were in the past - and maybe a sign that I need to be looking at more contemporary books rather than classics - but seriously, why? Did it really not occur to the authors at the time that it wasn’t nice to introduce to only children who might well be perfectly happy the idea that they ought to feel sorry for themselves?

The other thing I’m really struggling with is the number of parental deaths. Can’t believe how many children’s books seem to begin with this in some form or another! I wonder if I’m worrying too much, because I read these books myself as a child, and strangely even though I was quite an anxious kid it somehow never occurred to me to make the connection between the character’s parents dying and the idea that mine might. But one of my favourites starts with a parent dying in a plane crash. We flew a lot when I was a kid (due to DF’s family living overseas) and I never worried about this, but friend’s daughter also gets taken on a lot of international trips and I really don’t want to be the one to introduce the idea that this is something she needs to worry about! Am I being over-scrupulous?

YABU: kid will be caught up in the story and won’t even notice or care about the bits about only children being pitiable and parents being killed in plane crashes

YANBU: pick something else

Oh gosh I
Forgot about harriet the spy

While orphans are common in children's fiction, I am surprised that you would find so many books with pity for only children.

I would perhaps avoid plane crash stories under the circumstances; but there are many books without such disasters.

E. Nesbit's 'Five Children and It' series is excellent; also 'The Railway Children'; father is in prison on a wrongful charge for much of the book, but no dead parents.

I second the recommendation of Beverly Cleary's 'Ramona' books. Other good American series (though I don't know how easy they are to come by nowadays) are Maud Hart Lovelace's 'Betsy-Tacy' books and Sydney Taylor's 'All of a Kind Family' books.

An old series which has a very positive portrayal of an only child with both parents, several loving adult relatives, and a good circle of friends is Joyce Lankester Brisley's 'Milly Molly Mandy' series. But probably a bit young for a 9-year-old.

I second the recommendation of 'Harriet the Spy'.

Generally taking the parents out of the situation sets the protagonist free. The child can explore the world, go to fairyland, become a doll, sail a ship BECAUSE they have no parents to hold them back or for them to feel sad about leaving behind or to tell them no.

It's a common trope likely because it makes the character untethered. It also makes them an underdog... so even if they're a bit of a snit it's excused because they're orphaned.

All sorts of reasons. It's just a literary trope. But yes, it's quite strange when you focus on it.

I love ‘All of a Kind Family’ and was actually thinking about getting her the first book in the series, but frustratingly it turned out to be a prime example of what I’m talking about - in the first chapter the sisters meet a kind female librarian who tells them she has no brothers or sisters, and they all pity how awful that is, which she agrees with.

’Milly Molly Mandy’ rings a bell as something I enjoyed as a kid but I don’t remember it very well - will have to look it up!

Agree endlessness parents dying in children literature