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A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a story for 9 year olds about Sara Crewe, who decides to behave like a princess no matter what happens to her.
Sara Crewe arrives in London from India when she is seven. Her mother died when she was born. Her father is about to leave her at a boarding school and sail back to his regiment.
She notices everything. One look at the headmistress and Sara thinks she has cold fishy eyes, a cold fishy smile, and has begun by telling a lie.
For a while it's lovely. Sara has the best room in the house and a doll she picked out herself. She gives tea parties. She tells stories so well that the other girls crowd in to listen. She's kind to Lottie, who hasn't got a mother either, and to Becky, the kitchen maid nobody else speaks to.
Then it turns, about a third of the way in. A lawyer arrives during Sara's birthday party. Her father has died and all his money is gone.
Miss Minchin tells Sara to her face that she is a beggar with no home and nobody in the world. Sara is moved to the attic, put in a black dress she has outgrown and set to work. She lies awake up there listening to rats and saying papa is dead, papa is dead, until she falls asleep.
If bereavement is too close to home for your reader just now, this one can wait. If they're the sort who loves being absolutely furious on a character's behalf, it's one of the very best for that.
What gets Sara through is pretending. The attic becomes the Bastille and Miss Minchin becomes the jailer. Everything is a story, she tells Ermengarde. I'm a story. You're a story.
She also stays polite while being insulted, which is somehow more satisfying than shouting back would be. Miss Minchin absolutely hates it.
This version is told in short, plain sentences with short chapters, so it goes down more easily than a Victorian classic usually does. It's a good one to read a chapter of at bedtime, although you may find yourself doing Miss Minchin's voice.
The other thing worth saying is that it's a book about being decent to people who have less than you do. Sara shares her cake with Becky before she loses everything, and she carries on sharing afterwards.
If Sara stays with your reader, Hetty Feather is in the library as well. Hetty is a Victorian girl with no mother and a matron every bit as horrible as Miss Minchin, and she gets through it in much the same way, by imagining her way out.
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