A Place to Hang the Moon

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (1999)

This acclaimed novel also follows the misadventures of three clever orphans who are seeking an appropriate guardian. Like William, Edmund, and Anna, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire have only their cleverness and their close sibling bond to rely on as they try to find a suitable place for themselves after the death of their parents. Kate Albus’s novel deploys a wry narrative voice that is reminiscent of Snicket’s.

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1950)

This plot of this classic piece of children’s fantasy literature begins when the Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, are evacuated from their London home in 1940 to escape the German Blitz. They are sent to a manor in a remote part of northern England. Like A Place to Hang the Moon, this novel is filled with clever and loving siblings. It also demonstrates The Importance of Stories in Difficult Times, as the Pevensie children literally escape through a wardrobe into the magical storybook-like land of Narnia. Both Lewis and Albus’s Edmunds are candy-loving boys who bring on the main conflicts within the stories.

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The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton (1939)

This is the first novel in Enid Blyton’s classic series of children’s books, The Faraway Tree. Three siblings move from the city to the country, where they discover an enchanted wood filled with different creatures and lands. In A Place to Hang the Moon, Mrs. Müller receives this book in her library. Due to its similarities to the Pearce children’s situation, she gives it to Edmund so he can be its “first reader.”

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905)

This classic piece of children’s literature follows Sara Crewe, a rich but unpretentious and compassionate girl who is sent from her family in British-occupied India to boarding school in Britain. After her father dies, Sara is abused relentlessly by the headmistress. This is the book that Anna brings with her on evacuation. As she reads, she finds the contents hauntingly relatable to her own situation.

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