Charles Dickens and Friends: Five Lively Retellings by Marcia Williams

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With trademark liveliness and wit, the creator of BRAVO, MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE! moves into Victorian territory-presenting five retellings of classic Dickens that are sure to lure the most reluctant reader.

What the Dickens? GREAT EXPECTATIONS, OLIVER TWIST, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, DAVID COPPERFIELD, and A TALE OF TWO CITIES - five literary classics take on a new life in these wonderfully accessible retellings by Marcia Williams. A welcoming ...

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Overview

With trademark liveliness and wit, the creator of BRAVO, MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE! moves into Victorian territory-presenting five retellings of classic Dickens that are sure to lure the most reluctant reader.

What the Dickens? GREAT EXPECTATIONS, OLIVER TWIST, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, DAVID COPPERFIELD, and A TALE OF TWO CITIES - five literary classics take on a new life in these wonderfully accessible retellings by Marcia Williams. A welcoming introduction to Dickens’s work, this completely kid-friendly collection offers a simple narrative retelling of each tale, along with amusing scene-to-scene drawings of well-known Dickensian characters and bits of dialogue excerpted from the original texts.

Five tales by Charles Dickens ("Oliver Twist," "Great Expectations," "A Tale of Two Cities," "David Copperfield," and "A Christmas Carol") retold in the form of comic strips.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
With her usual engaging approach, Marcia Williams tackles the works of Charles Dickens (as she has Homer, Shakespeare and others in the past) in Charles Dickens and Friends. A handful of Victorian classics-Oliver Twist; Great Expectations; A Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield; and A Christmas Carol-unfold in sepia-toned cartoon panels with a pacing that plays up Oliver's plea for "More," the storming of the Bastille, and Marley's ghostly appearance to Scrooge.
School Library Journal
Gr 3-6-Somewhere between "Classic Comics" (Smithmark) and graphic novels lies this collection of Dickens's works, drastically abridged and presented in large comic-strip format, combining adapted text below cartoon drawings. Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and A Christmas Carol are distilled into 6- to 10-page stories that include the bare rudiments of each plot and droll illustrations featuring dialogue taken directly from the original works, spilling out of the frames into the margins with additional witty commentary. Condensing long novels into so few pages requires judicious use of words, and Williams rises to the challenge, providing the salient events in a reasonably smooth narrative flow. Nevertheless, Dickens's masterful storytelling is lost and thus there is a greater dependence on the pictures to make the stories interesting and fun. The framed, whimsical art, which varies widely in palette, size, and tone, corresponding with theme and action, is augmented with banner heads taken from chapter titles. Readers will, of course, be familiar with A Christmas Carol and, perhaps, Oliver Twist, and will likely enjoy revisiting them and poring over the details of the illustrations, although the meaning of some of the captions will undoubtedly elude them. An interesting, if barely adequate, introduction to these classics.-Marie Orlando, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
With small, teeming cartoon scenes so boisterous that they frequently burst their borders, Williams (Bravo, Mr. William Shakespeare!, 2000, etc.) catapults readers headlong through five of Dickens's best-known melodramas, introducing an array of curly-haired naifs, roundly vivacious young women, and pasty-faced villains, as well as those distinctively colorful supporting casts of orphans, convicts, ne'er-do-wells, widows, pickpockets, ghosts, and more--all of whom speak in snatches of Dickens's own dialogue. Taking each tale's original narrative voice, Williams fills in the gaps with necessarily substantial captions, and for additional atmosphere adds borders of dingy London rooftops, or groups of gnomes and other small creatures observing the action from the margins. Williams's figures may be tiny, but their personalities are distinctly larger than life; just as Oliver Twist, Bill Sikes, icky Uriah Heep, Scrooge, Miss Havisham, and the rest came alive for Dickens, so will they come alive for readers years (or decades) away from tackling the full length originals. Pair this with Diane Stanley's Charles Dickens: The Man Who Had Great Expectations (1993) to lay far, far better groundwork for a later appreciation of some timeless classics than filmed versions, or more conventional abridgements, ever could. (Picture book. 8-10)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780763619053
  • Publisher: Candlewick Press
  • Publication date: 10/28/2002
  • Edition description: 1ST US
  • Pages: 48
  • Age range: 8 - 12 Years
  • Product dimensions: 10.20 (w) x 13.08 (h) x 0.43 (d)

Meet the Author

Marcia Williams has retold many classics for children, including GREEK MYTHS FOR THE VERY YOUNG, THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY, TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE, and BRAVO, MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE! Of this book she says, "When I was at school, I had one teacher who was extremely fierce and angry. I was very frightened of her, except when she read the stories of Charles Dickens aloud. Through her, all his characters lived and I was transported to their Victorian world. I hope that readers will also enter the wonderful world of Charles Dickens through this book."

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Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews
  • Anonymous

    Posted September 12, 2002

    Williams Never Disappoints

    Although this title is not yet released, I am a huge fan of Marcia Williams' books. My children and I love her vivid illustrations and her style of summerizing great works by Shakespeare and others. We have all her books and every one of them are great. I would recomend all her work to anyone who loves childrens books. I am sure this title will be as good as her others. I can't wait to get it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 14, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

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