Even though Charles Dickens lived more than 100 years ago,he was your friend.He wrote stories about boys and girls and grown ups who lived in England.Partly because of those stories,children are treated better now than they were when Dickens lived.
If she had been a real person you'd have liked Little Dorrit,who had to live in a prison house because her parents were too poor to pay the money they owed.When Dickens was young,his father and mother lived in such a place.
Charles Dickens was not much older than you when he had to quit school and take a job away from home.He worked from morning until night,with very little food to eat and only an attic in which to sleep.He tells about this in his book David Copperfield.In another story Dickens tells us how children were treated in some of the schools of that time.At his own school sometimes he was beaten with the teacher's cane for laughing too loudly or for forgetting his lesson.
When Dickens tells you that Little Nell and her gransfather left home to live as beggars,you will be sad that such things could happen.One of Dickens' best known stories is called A Christmas Carol,It tells about a rich man named Scrooge,who didn't like Christmas and about Tiny Tim,the cheerful crippled son of Bob Cratchit a man who worked for Scroge.
These and many more storybook people came from the life Dickens knew.When the stories were first read some people were angry.Others were ashamed.Some laughed when they saw their own foolish habits acted out by people in Dickens books.And many begin to belive that children should be having fun...that they should not be beaten for forgetting school lessons...that they should not have to leave home and go to work when they are very young.
One hundred years later people are still reading Dickens book for the good stories that they tell.And I grew up reading Charles Dickens book.
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