What do Charles Dickens and Beverly Cleary have in common?

Three things: They both wrote for the audience of their day. They both were prolific writers. And they both wrote books that are sympathetic toward children—the kinds of children they themselves were. Take a look.

Charles Dickens could read by the time he was four years old (the year was 1816), but his reading did not make much difference to his family. When he was 12 years old, his dad was first arrested for being in debt. Many families today live in debt without being considered criminals, but in England in 1824 authorities would send a man to jail for having a debt he could not pay. Charles had to leave his family and work in a factory, visiting his dad every Sunday, until he was released from prison that year at the end of May. About 10 years later his dad was arrested again for the same reason. Is it any wonder that Oliver Twist was Dickens’s first major novel?

Interesting about this first novel is that Charles did not tell the story of a father sent to jail. He did not know enough to write his father’s story. Rather, he told the story of a boy, Oliver, working as an orphan in a workhouse. That is what he knew, and that practice of writing from his life experiences fueled his astounding career.

Beverly Bunn Cleary was born in 1916 and is the author of the hysterically funny and highly popular Ramona books. But her life was not funny at first because she could not read. It took Beverly well into first grade to understand how words and sounds made sense. When she finally understood, she was totally bored much to the distress of her mother who was the town librarian. Even through second grade the children Beverly did read about were nothing like her. It was hard for her because her mother wanted her to enjoy reading. Beverly wanted to please her mother, but reading was so dull! 

Finally, Beverly grew into books with stories that she liked, but she never forgot the bored child she had been. On the writing advice of her mother to write with humor, Beverly did, writing a total of 36 books that have reached 14 different languages and untold numbers of children and families around the world.

Looking for More Articles?