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Andrea Warren
CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON 2011 Houghton Mifflin Books for Children Reading level: Young Adult Hardcover: 160 pages ISBN-10: 0547395744 Reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com not reviewable 08/08/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? yes. review: =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 08/08/2011 name of review: Charles Dickens Forced Readers To See Britain's "Invisible Poor" and to Care About Them rating: * * * * review: On her web site author Andrea Warren tells us what she has in mind in her forthcoming 2011 book, CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON. "I became intrigued when I learned that Dickens wrote
several of his novels in a very calculated fashion to produce social
reform that would help the lower classes. .. this book
(is) about one of the greatest authors and reformers in history."
In her book for young readers Warren argues that Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) deliberately structured most of his 20 novels and many short stories to make non-working class people and non-poor readers notice, be appalled by and do something practical to improve the dirty, smoky, violent, shortlived underbelly of Victorian British society. Charles Dickens was a very private man. He was completely frank about his early poverty with only one man, his friend and biographer John Forster. His father was a kind man who had a weakness for overspending. This landed him twice in debtors' prison. And Charles Dickens had to bail out his father time and again. Meanwhile the boy Charles was working in a blacking factory, for the first time in his life exposed to lower class boys as working colleagues. He dressed well even in the factory and spoke well too. He made good friends there and he developed the insight that the poor of England were not doomed by Fate or predestined by God to remain forever subservient, ignorant, dirty and despised. Beginning with OLIVER TWIST, Charles Dickens began relentlessly spotlighting the injustices of English and Scottish society: mistreatment of children, workhouses, poor schools run by sadistic masters who placed five boys in one bed, and on and on. Author Andrea Warren showcases Charles Dickens along with musician George Friedrich Handel and painter William Hogarth as the three great advocates and effective friends of the poor of Britain. Queen Victoria read everything of Dickens she could get her hands on and had him several times to the palace. But Dickens did not socialize with royalty or aristocracy. His friends were musicians and writers. And he was idolized by the poor, who saw him as their voice. If there is an obvious weakness about CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON, it is its tone of self-righteous preachiness. At narrative end the author editorializes in a section entitled, "How You Can Make A Difference." Imitate Irish musician Bono, she suggests, and help fight poverty and world hunger! Donate to www.FightForTheChildren.org if you want to support medical care in developing countries! Join Invisible Children doing good in Uganda! "Charles Dickens and other reformers
you've read about in this book can be your inspiration. They proved the
power of one, and so can you."
All in all, THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON is an excellent introduction to Dickens for any reader, young or old. Structuring Charles Dickens as a writer whose only goals as a writer are to make a living and to induce the rich to help the poor lends considerable, if debatable, unity to the life of this great writer. -OOO- http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/d/UserReview- Andrea_Warren_CHARLES_DICKENS_AND_ THE_STREEET_CHILDREN_OF_LONDON- 74-1753876-211289-Charles_Dickens_Forced_Readers_ To_See_Britain_s.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 08/08/2011 title of review: OLIVER TWIST showed Charles Dickens "how much power he wielded as a writer" rating: * * * * review: Posted 8/8/2011: Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812 - 1870 was born of lower middle class parents. Both were in domestic service and could afford to send the future novelist's sister to a grand music school. Both parents were gifted story tellers. At age 12, just before Charles's father went to debtors' prison, the boy began working ten hour days six days a week in a factory that made boot blacking substances. For the first time the well dressed, clean, carefully spoken boy was rubbing shoulders with desperate children of the lower classes of London. The lower classes had been taught that they had been placed low by the will of God and they were to accept their poverty, dirt and horrible health meekly. Middle and upper classes, aristocracy and royalty looked down on them, wanted nothing to do with them. Charles Dickens, by contrast, in daily contact with them, saw that many if not most of the poor were "deserving" poor. They had done nothing wrong. People better off than they should notice them, feel for them and work to improve their terrible plight. It is a major thesis of Andrea Warren's 2011 CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON that Charles Dickens in most of his 20 novels and numberless short stories deliberately set out to inspire readers in a position to uplift the poor to do so. His first published book was a collection of BOZ stories. His first novel was OLIVER TWIST. That novel was also England's first novel with a boy as its hero. Instantly Charles Dickens was on all men's lips and in many readers' hearts, including Queen Victoria's. Dickens made Britons hate workhouses, poorhouses, miserable private schools and the whole system of parish-run doles for the poor. "Dickens learned from
the public's embrace of OLIVER TWIST and the subsequent outcry against
the workhouses how much power he wielded as a writer, and he was
determined to use it to end the suffering of innocent boys by closing
down the Yorkshire schools" (Ch 11).
This is a book for teens and young adults. It presents a debatable portrait of Charles Dickens as essentially a social reformer whose tool was his pen. Author Andrea Warren makes it clear that though Dickens did much good for the poor, he was not alone, nor indeed the first to do so. Musician Handel and painter Hogarth are singled out for special praise as is the ship captain who rescued foundlings. The book has a good bibliography and points out channels in which today's young people can work to improve the lot of today's poor. I found it helpful that the author was careful on almost every third page to make it clear exactly how old Charles Dickens was in a given year. In a couple of ways, Dickens reminds of the young Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936). Both were teen age journalists. Both had written notable works before they were 25. Neither was a university man, though Kipling's formal education was better. This book, CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON is a keeper. -OOO- recommended reading: Charles Dickens - OLIVER TWIST, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, A CHRISTMAS CAROL http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/ review.aspx?reviewid=1797100 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com title of review: rating: review: http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Dickens-Street-Children -London/dp/0547395744/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= 1312313366&sr=8-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 08/10/2010 Review Title: Charles Dickens as Social Reformer: The Case of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY Product Rating: * * * * PROS: Apt pictures of London poverty. Showcases Dickens's fiction as effective agitation for social reform. CONS: Author uses Dickens as confirming authority for own values of compassion for the downtrodden. BOTTOM LINE: Strikingly useful, albeit debatable, pigeonholing literary works of Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) as planned, effective special pleading for the poor and downtrodden of Britain, especially children. Beautifully illustrated. Lively. Concrete. aohcapablanca's Full Review: I like and commend Andrea Warren's forthcoming (November 2011) CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON. I will discuss its flaws later (they are merely annoying, not deal breakers). Why read this book? Who can read it with pleasure and for useful information? -- (1) CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET
CHILDREN OF LONDON provides a simple framing concept that unifies half
or more of Dickens's 20 novels, plus "A Christmas Carol" and some short
stories. That concept is that readers should be on the lookout in all
of Dickens's subsequent to his second novel, OLIVER TWIST, for an
author with a mission. That mission was in grisly detail to make the
middle and upper classes of Britain first notice, then be horrified by
and finally take helpful action regarding the miserable, smelly,
unhealthy lives of lower class Britons, especially children. This
mission was to be accomplished how? By Dicken's hand and through his
pen.
Fiction would become means to two ends: to make a good living for the author but also, and primarily, to make Britain a better, more just place to live. Author Andrea Warren, in a non-scholarly way, makes a prima facie plausible case for her thesis. And this thesis gives ordinary young readers of Dickens a useful framework for ordering his sometimes jumbled yarns. -- (2) Warren's book is a good beginners' biography of a great man and his times. -- (3) The author also carefully embeds Dickens the social reformer in a pantheon of other Britons who fought for or otherwise helped the poor children of the Kingdom, notably musician Handel, painter Hogarth and sea captain Thomas Coram, builder of The Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury. Dickens and wife Catherine attended Sunday services in the Hospital's chapel. If you are deciding whether to read, CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON for the above or any other reasons, what more will you find special in this book's text? -- (1) It is generously illustrated by
black and white drawings, portraits and photographs. I counted 55 in a
total of 156 pre-publication pages. Many are poignant contemporary
portrayals of the poor.
-- (2) In her imagination, the author invites us to accompany Charles Dickens on a few of his famous walks around London, some covering 20 miles in a day. It is a good technique for bringing in whatever scenes of markets and churches that she chooses. -- (3) In Warren's treatment of "A Christmas Carol," we learn that Dickens almost singlehandedly overcame 200 year old Puritan-spirited laws demoting the carnal or joyful aspects of that ancient Christian feast. "The book nearly put suppliers of geese out of business, however, for in the story, Scrooge sends Bob Cratchit's family the prize turkey hanging in the window of a local poultry shop. Ever since, the British have favored roast turkey over roast goose for their Christmas feast" (Ch. 13). -- (4) One feature that gratifies me is Andrea Water's habit of reminding us readers every three pages or so precisely how old Dickens was in a particular year or when serializing a particular novel. A weakness: There is unrelenting sermonizing throughout CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON. The author runs the danger of using Dickens's words as a means to her personal goal of persuading today's young people to be generous to poor children around the world through channels which she identifies at length. Her substantive thesis is that positive public reaction to Dickens's second novel, OLIVER TWIST, showed him for the first time the power of his imagination and his pen and caused him henceforth to do most of his writing with conscious social reforms in mind. Thus Dickens attacked the work house, the foundling homes, a couple of dozen cheap, dreadful boarding schools in Yorkshire and on and on. Let NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (serialized monthly 1838 - 1839) serve to illustrate how Warren presents Dickens. Like Kipling in years to come, Dickens had been a teenage journalist. And he would foreshadow Sinclair Lewis in his methods of doing factual research for his coming fictions. Having heard horror stories of Yorkshire schools, Dickens "began
working on a story about a young man he named Nicholas Nickleby, who
goes to teach in one of the Yorkshire schools, realizes the horrific
conditions, confronts the brutal headmaster, and, after many twists and
turns, gets the school shut down" (Ch. 11).
"In January 1838, when he was twenty- six he (Dickens) and a friend traveled from London to Yorkshire by horse-drawn coach -- an exhausting trip of 240 miles..." In Yorkshire Dickens visited real schools. Everything he saw later appeared in NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. In a nearby graveyard, he saw the graves of 34 school-boys dead in 20 years. "Home
again from his journey, Dickens set to work. Once again he employed
romance, comedy, pathos, and melodrama, along with a colorful cast of
characters that included devilish villains, brave heroes, and virtuous
heroines -- all the things Victorian readers loved."
Like his hero, Dickens wanted those Yorkshire schools closed and it happened. Dickens, says Warren, then moved on to a new social cause: education of illiterate slum children and "it should be free." If Andrea Warren is correct, many of Dicken's 20 novels and dozens of short stories are more than mere entertainment. They were and remain deliberate instruments of social change and their effects are still with us today. On her web site Andrea Warren writes: "I became intrigued when I learned that Dickens wrote several of his novels in a very calculated fashion to produce social reform that would help the lower classes. His devotion to improving the lives of the poor stemmed from his own difficult childhood when he came very close to becoming one of the street children." -OOO- p. s. Thank you, Pestyside Patsy, for making CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STREET CHILDREN OF LONDON reviewable on epinions.com. And I thank amazon.com's VINE program for allowing me to select, at no cost to myself, this book to review. Recommended: Yes. http://www.epinions.com/review/Andrea_Warren_Charles_Dickens _and_the_Street_Children_of_London_epi/content_560254914180 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= warren_dickens http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/andrea_dickens.html |