BOOKS TO NOTE: Stories About Orphans

Of individual orphans, orphans who were part of the Orphan Train iduring the years 1854-1929 in the United States, and orphans who were part of the Kinderstransport going from Europe to England during WW 2

The start of a series of stories about an orphan girl sent to live with an aging sister and brother on Canada’s Prince Edward Island during the early 20th century. Needing help with their land, the elderly siblings are surprised to see a girl instead of a boy they had asked for. What’s to be done now?!

Sister and brother twins live with their grandmother, but the elderly woman is sick, and soon cannot care for the siblings anymore. The twins fear they will be sent to a workhouse. However, a man decides to take in the brother and give him whatever he needs. The man does not want the sister, however. The twins begin their separate lives from then on. Will they ever see each other again?!

The original story on which the musical play ANNIE is based.

Of a girl caring for her little brothers around the time of WW 1. She goes out to search for food, but collapses with the flu that is the Great Epidemic of 1918, is taken to a hospital for orphans, and can’t get back to her little siblings who are themselves caught up in a scheme involving orphans!

Of an Irish immigrant girl sent to the mid-west U.S. on the Orphan Train, her growing up there, and her adult life with her living in New England with the memories of her childhood.

A young woman caring for two younger siblings, needs to get out of New York City. A priest is able to offer her a job on the Orphan Train. She’s there to help the children as they are transported to new lives. She’s determined to help them be placed well in families that care about them. She expects help on the job from the man she thinks she’s assistant to, but he has his own problems that he’s struggling to deal with, so she turns out to be more in charge of things.

A Jewish girl during WW 2 is sent away by her mother to live with two Polish women so the girl will be safe from the NAZIS who want to exterminate the Jewish civilization. The story is based on a diary written by the real-life girl’s mother.

A Jewish girl in Vienna, Austria, is a musical prodigy. Her father is able to get her, one of his children, a spot on the Kinderstransport which brings some Jewish children to safety from Vienna to London. Finding her way to an orphanage, she inspires the children there with her music, and they encourage her to eventually pursue a music career.  

Stories based on actual experiences of young Jewish children who were transported from 1938 through 1940 to England from European countries to protect them from the NAZIS who were determined to kill all Jewish people.

In the early days before the U.S. became a nation, a 16 year old girl, Kit, makes her way from Barbados where she lived with her grandfather who recently died. She aims to go to live with an unsuspecting aunt and uncle in New England. The aunt and uncle take her in, but the townspeople don’t take to this strange girl. She tries to fit in by teaching her young cousin and the town’s children, but things go wrong. A woman living outside the town befriends her, but that woman is thought to be a witch. How will Kit survive in this era when witchcraft is feared everywhere? Elizabeth George Speare won an award for this novel for young readers.