Today, Feb. 7, marks the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. The lead-up to this milestone has spawned a number of books about the man who wrote Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. The picture book A Boy Called Dickens gives children a piece of the action, telling the story of the young Dickens, who works in a blacking factory (where they make shoe polish) while his family is in debtors' prison. It is a harsh story – one Dickens kept secret for many years – but one that informed his famous tales about the downtrodden and the desperate in 19th century London.
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Author Deborah Hopkinson's previous biographical storybooks include Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale; Fannie in the Kitchen, about the original Francis Farmer of the classic cookbook; Girl Wonder, based on the life of Alta Weiss, the first female to pitch for a semipro all-male baseball team; and Apples to Oregon, about the woman, Henderson Luelling, who brought apple trees across the Oregon Trail. My daughters and I have been big fans of Hopkinson, who lives in Oregon, for the accessible and fun way she presents history – especially, in our case, the history of women.
Dickens is an interesting subject for a picture book. My girls know something of A Christmas Carol – my 9-year-old even read it last December – and they've seen the movie of the musical, Oliver!, but they know nothing about the other stories alluded to in the book; the origin of Great Expectations, for example, is featured prominently in A Boy Called Dickens. Despite that, the story makes for a wonderful introduction to this great author and the awful conditions he lived in and, later, featured in his works. Hopkinson does a nice job of drawing us into the dirty, foggy streets of London and the blacking factory where Dickens worked. And, I particularly like the way she shows the young Dickens imagining stories out of the people around him and incidents in his life. My daughters may not be ready, yet, for me to read Great Expectations to them, but I hope the story sets them up to enjoy Dickens in the years ahead.
The story of Dickens also stands alone as the tale of a boy who overcomes great adversity to become one of the greatest authors of his age. As Hopkinson writes on the last page of the book, "For years Dickens kept the story of his own childhood a secret. Yet it is a story worth telling. For it helps us remember how much we all might lose when a child's dreams don't come true."
A Boy Called Dickens, by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by John Hendrix, Schwartz & Wade Books, $17.99. Ages 4-9.
