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Can anyone suggest a few titles Children's titles that have very few characters in? Ideally looking for the 9-11 bracket upwards.
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Daddy drinks because you cry.
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OOps. You meant characters as in letters? Oh dear.
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From what I remember, Paul Gallico's children's books have a small cast of characters, eg: The Snow Goose.
- NaomiM
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Thanks for that Naomi
Gaius I can see how you managed to interpret it that way, I'm a sucker for a short title but I was referring to the number of characters in the story.
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Books with small numbers of characters are usually to be found in survival situations - I'm sure I read several as a child where pairs of children were stranded in the outback, in forests, in frozen wastes, on islands, the American prairies, etc. Sorry, can't remember any titles, though.
- NaomiM
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That's a damn shame as that's the kind of thing I have in mind for my book!
Though I did come across this list
Survival Lit for kids
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| That's a damn shame as that's the kind of thing I have in mind for my book! |
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Why's that a shame, Colin? Don't let it stop you from writing your own version.
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I remember the 'lost on the American Prairie' one was written by Louis L'Amour, and of the dozens of L'Amour books I read back then, it made the greatest impression on me.
As I remember it, Laura Engles Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books, also had a limited cast of characters and a great Frontier's feel to them.
- NaomiM
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Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom only has two characters, as I recall. Certainly it does for the bulk of the story.
Haven't read it for years, but another classic is E L Konigsberg's The Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, where again the bulk of the story is the narrator and her brother.
Emma
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Also Walkabout - three characters.
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Yes, the early Ingalls Wilder ones are very small casts - when she's young (= enclosed world) and they're in the real frontier territory.
The adults in the Swallows and Amazons are very peripheral, so the main cast is usually only 4 or 6. Most of We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is the four of them swept out into the North Sea at night, in someone else's boat.
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Hatchet by Gary Paulsen is a survival story with really just one character, as I remember.
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Isn't My Side of the Mountain (can't remember the author) pretty much a boy on his own?
Emma
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geoffmorris
NMott
EmmaD