Charles Dickens: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life
This wonderful picture storybook of Dickens’ life is ideal for eleven- to fifteen-year- olds. Revealing conditions of mid-19th century life in and around London, England, it gives us a fascinating depiction of his finest characters and the conditions in which they – and the Dickens family – lived. Dickens was born in 1812 in maritime Portsmouth in an age of revolution. The country was at war with Napoleon, poverty was endemic, and machines were replacing jobs.
Dickens had a childhood steeped in music and drama, and the atmospheric illustrations show him performing as a childhood phenomenon. When he was twelve, the family moved to London, and Brita Granström’s lively watercolour drawings allow us to see what early 19th-century London was like: filthy and dangerous. However, the underbelly of the city also enabled Dickens to meet the people and face the problems that later feature in his novels.
What is very special about this book is its natural, undaunting appearance. Having been designed for easy reading, it’s obviously not an adult book. It will go some way to encourage more children to explore books in libraries and may persuade publishers to follow suit by establishing a new format for ‘middle-age’ children.
What I liked too, was the meticulous research. Both author and illustrator have obviously gone into Dickens’ life and works in depth. There are echoes of Doré’s prints of London low life in some of the cartoons, for example. And they have obviously studied the original illustrations for the novels by Phiz and other Dickens illustrators. Colourful and easy for a child to read at a table, Charles Dickens will be a present to my granddaughters of eleven and twelve.
