WHO WAS . . . CHARLES DICKENS
by Andrew Billen
Short Books, £4.99; 128pp
£4.74 (free p&p) 0870 1608080
www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

WITH THE BBC adaptation of Bleak House and the Roman Polanski film of Oliver hitting screens small and big, Dickens is flavour of the month.

Dramatic, suspenseful, comic and rich in remarkable characters and settings, his stories have always appealed to children as much as to adults. When mine were aged 7 and 9, I kept them happy for a whole week by telling them the plot of Great Expectations in instalments; many more adore the musical Oliver! and the Disney version (with Oliver as a kitten and the rest of the cast as dogs).

However, he is hard work for the modern child. Whereas any bright 11-year-old can sail through Jane Austen, Dickens will barnacle your child’s mind with digressions, diversions and grotesques. The maddening thing is that all children of 10 have to study the Victorians for Key Stage 2 history, and the very writer who could teach them most about this period is just too hard.

It is not even any good getting the splendid audio versions read by Anton Lesser: in the absence of the numbing boredom of the Victorian hearthside, you need Andrew Billen's biography, Who Was Charles Dickens? to whet their appetites.

Billen, a journalist of this parish, has previously written a fine biography of Samuel Johnson for Short Books, and evidently has a strong fellow-feeling for writers of the kind who would now be condemned in the libel courts. He is a natural storyteller, understanding that what will grab children’s attention is the story of how his heroes suffered misfortune as children before becoming celebrities. Dickens, of course, had a life almost tailor-made for this kind of tale.

Instead of starting with the poor, bright boy being sent to toil at 10 in the bottle factory, Billen begins with Dickens at the height of his fame, giving one of his electrifying readings. This is the novelist as superstar, something that even J. K. Rowling can only dream of, because Dickens was a performer of genius, as well as a writer.

The easy, direct style of this little biography is thoroughly appealing. More than half is concerned with the young Dickens’s life as the son of a spendthrift father; his long, solitary walks through the London slums impressed my 10-year-old son more than anything, although Dickens’s part in getting closed bad schools run by bullying teachers came a close second.

All the most salient features of his work and life are here, including the affair with the young Nelly Ternan uncovered by Claire Tomalin. Billen concentrates longest on recounting the plot of A Christmas Carol — which he believes to be the best book for a child to start off with. But as a parent who has watched dispiriting school productions of the tale, I am not sure that this is a wise choice. An elderly miser’s change of heart, even when brought about by ghosts, is less gripping to the infant mind than A Tale of Two Cities, or, indeed, Oliver Twist. Dickens was particularly good at villains, and five minutes of Magwitch or Fagin is better than a chapter of Scrooge.

The Who Was? series has become an invaluable resource for both English and history, with biographies of Nelson, Florence Nightingale, Shakespeare and Jane Austen mingling with more eccentric choices, such as Perkin Warbeck and Madame Tussaud. Younger children of an inquiring mind turn to Richard Brassey’s Brilliant Brits, but these are more sophisticated, as well as being exceptionally well written and without the taint of the classroom about them. Unfortunately, they continue to have one defect, which is the poor illustrations. In the case of Dickens, this is particularly annoying.

Billen’s warmth of affection and his deep admiration for his subject are infectious and make this a treat to slip into a bookish child’s Christmas stocking. Next month, as we wrestle with Christmas trees, we can thank Dickens for that, too.

What's more . . .

CHARLES DICKENS AND FRIENDS
by Marcia Williams
Walker, £5.99 For 6+

CHRISTMAS CAROL
by Charles Dickens
illustrated by Christian Birmingham
Running Press, £10.99 For 9+

THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE
by Philip Pullman
Scholastic, £5.99 For 10+

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
by Charles Dickens
illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus
Oxford, For 11+

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