Dans la famille nombreuse de la littérature de jeunesse, je ne demande que quelques orphelin(e)s

By effacing the authority of the father, modern history has provided children’s literature with an alternative: that of validating the orphaned condition of its heroes. On the one hand, this occurs at the level of literary filiation –the authors J.-C. Mourlevat and M.-A. Murail recognise the influence of Perrault and Dickens– and, on the other, at the level of the children represented in fiction; regardless of the young heroes’ destinies in the work of these two writers, their orphan status reflects the society which they are a product of.