There are topics that seem to lie on the surface, but at the same time poorly studied. It’s impossible to count how many pages of world literature are devoted to orphans. Ancient and medieval authors wrote about children without fathers and/or mothers, followed by Charles Dickens and Roald Dahl, Astrid Lindgren and Hans Christian Andersen, Veniamin Kaverin and Korney Chukovsky, and modern authors also write about them. What caused such interest in the orphan archetype ? How has this image evolved over several centuries? What values do The Story of Tom Jones, Foundling and The Hunger Games convey? The author of the book “The Ugly Duckling, Harry Potter and Others” asks similar questions. A guide to children's books about orphans" by Olga Bukhina, and many find unexpected answers that say a lot about us, the readers. The book provides a detailed analysis of the motif of orphanhood in world literature, and the author focuses on the most popular, read, and discussed books of the past and present. An orphan of the nineteenth century suffered and tried to somehow get settled in life, in the twentieth century he became decisive and active, and in the twenty-first he turned out to be able to save the world, like, for example, Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen. Translator, literary critic and specialist in children's literature Olga Bukhina analyzes the reasons for such changes and outlines the possible development of the image in the future. The guide will be useful to parents, librarians and teachers seeking to choose the most suitable literature for children's reading. Conveniently organized reference material will also help them in their choice, including lists of books and films, as well as the unique author’s “Encyclopedia of Orphans”. In addition, the book will appeal to connoisseurs of research into cultural phenomena.