Now that NaNoWriMo is over with for 2011, I finally have some time to read and watch movies. But both orphanages or boarding schools are still on my mind…
What can you recommend for a book or movie set in either? Fiction or non-fiction are both fine. Non-fiction would actually be awesome since I have read very little on either of the subjects. As for fiction, I don’t care about genre, so anything between earnest realistic depiction and a school full of wizards & witches* are welcome. Adult and YA novels are both fine too.
However, either way it would be nice if such tales have taken place in the last 30 years. I don’t mind recommendations like The Cider House Rules and A Great And Terrible Beauty if you consider something along those lines that a must read, but I’m more curious about what the experience would be like at either place now-ish.
Any stand out as particular favorites? Or strike you as utterly unrealistic if fictional?
Thanks
I’ve read: all the Harry Potter books, the Books of Fell by M.E. Kerr, Holly Black’s new Curse Workers books, the Gemma Doyle trilogy, Jane Erye, Oliver Twist, A Little Princess & The Catcher in the Rye. And I’ve seen: The Trouble with Angels, Strange Days at Blake Holsey High, The Facts of Life, and The Dead Poets Society. I think that’s about it.
YA British Alternate History - Knightly Academy series by Violet Haberdasher (and yes that’s a psudonym, why do you ask? 2 so far - Knightly Academy and The Secret Prince, very strongly (and purposefully) based on the ‘feeling’ of the HP series.
ETA - You might also watch Annie - the version with Carol Burnett as Mrs Hannigan makes me happy every time I watch it. All those little girls and all those raggedy clothes.
Tom Brown’s Schooldays. I’m not certain it’s the first, but it’s THE classic boarding school story.
Malory Towers. This is a cute British series of books set in a boarding school somewhere along the coast (?). At least one of the stories had an OUTRAGEOUS American exchange student. I got mine from the UK and it seems that it may be difficult to get if you are in the US.
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. This is a rather good science fiction story with a big chunk of it set at a future “space academy” type of boarding school. Oh, did I mention it has laser tag tactics?
Prep is a pretty good read. It’s fiction, though if I recall correctly it’s somewhat autobiographical. Modern-day setting, boarding school, pretty good (though not great) read.
“Dear Enemy” is the little-known sequel to Jean Webster’s “Daddy-Long Legs”. It’s an epistolary novel told from the point of view of a society girl who has been put in charge of reforming an orphan asylum. It’s really sweet, but it’s also an interesting take on child-rearing and educational philosophies around the turn of the century. And you can read it in a couple hours–it’s very light.
I think Gossip Girl is a love it or hate it kind of thing, but should you happen to be one of those who loves it (I think it’s brilliant – the books, I’ve never seen the TV show), there is a companion series that starts with The It Girl, and is set at a modern day, posh boarding school. It’s ghostwritten by someone who is not von Ziegesar, so they are not quite as good as the Gossip Girl titles.
While I liked it a lot, almost none of it involves kids living in an orphanage. Like The Abandoned and Crazy Eights, it’s more of a go back to your (frightening) roots as adult sort of story.
There isn’t going to be much, at least set in developed countries.
After WWII, social services moved to foster care and to public aid for single parents, and the orphanage was relegated to history. Even institutional care for troubled and special needs kids is mostly group homes.
Would you be open to expanding your topics to include valiant, capable children whose parents are off-stage? (often FAR off-stage)
THAT’s an area that has always had an extensive literature.
Not contemporary, as the author was growing up in the early years of the twentieth century, but The King of the Barbareens is a very well-written book which examines what it was like to move between foster parents, boarding school, and Barnardo’s homes.
The ability of the author to write, and also her insight and retrospective acceptance of the fact that she was a less-than-lovable child, shows up contemporary misery memoirs for what they are.
We do still some of them in the US, though. There’s a Catholic orphanage just a couple of towns away from where I live; on nice days you can see the nuns taking the boys to the park.