The books below manifest their creators’ love for the patron saint of storytelling, but their virtue lies in more than their subject matter. Their own charm, wit, ingenuity, and, above all, heart, does just homage to the timeless Victorian author.
A Boy Called Dickens, by Deborah Hopkinson, ill. John Hendrix (Schwartz & Wade, 2012, 40 pp., ages 8–12)
Hopkinson and Hendrix pair fact with speculation to animate an epoch in the life of adolescent Charles. When the story opens, the unfortunate Dickens is living on his own and working in a boot black factory while the rest of his family languishes in debtors’ prison alongside his father. Author and illustrator join their imaginations to suggest people and situations that could have inspired Dickens’s later work. Orphans, misers, lawyers, clerks, ghosts, and maiden aunts all make their appearance in text and image. And, as with most of Dickens’s classics, the fortunes of the principal protagonist take a turn for the better before the final page.