Writers are always reading, and usually on more than one level. I still remember the shock I felt the first time I saw a typo in a published book. Even as a child, I noticed that child protagonists are disproportionately orphans. Once I noticed, it didn’t take long to figure out why. Parents protect their children. Safety precludes adventure. If you want your protagonist to have adventures, you’ve got to get the parents out of the way, and the easiest way is to knock them off.
Once upon a time, there was an orphan named….