A Taste of Dickens for our Times

Happy Autumn

         It’s a pleasure to be your host for Poetry Friday this week.  I’m always so excited to see what poetic gifts each of you offers.  Please add your links in the Inlinkz at the bottom of the post. 

        You may know that I volunteer at an all-volunteer-run used bookstore, and I have recently stepped down as the volunteer coordinator, but I'm still in charge of donations. We review them each Thursday, reject some, and shelve the others. We are grateful that they keep coming in, in large numbers, every week.

         Recently, an older set of nearly all the novels by Charles Dickens was donated. As I placed them in our classics section, I began to wonder if I could use the titles for a poem? This frustrating and actually frightening time in our country has taken up much of my time, and I am working to help the organizations that are fighting back, who are not accepting the changes being enacted. Thus, Dickens and my, perhaps nutty, imagination!

What I brought home!

What The Dickens?

If I could use The Pickwick Papers, being picky, 

I would write that these are Hard Times, 

though I continue to hold Great Expectations 

in spite of our recent world feeling like a Bleak House. 

This involves more than A Tale of Two Cities,

and it is not any of Dickens' Christmas Stories!       

Each morning I rise to face news of people 

appearing to live in the halcyon? days of Martin Chuzzlewit, 

some, or none claiming that man is Our Mutual Friend. 

He’s only The Haunted Man, filling us with something 

never To Be Read at Dusk, Time to check out

 The Mystery of Edwin Drood. You'll understand.

                                                                           Linda Baie ©

If you're wondering, these are Dickens' books I didn't use:  The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and Little Dorritt.

       

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Monday Reading - Sharing New and Older Books

       Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! 

     I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving wherever you celebrated. I did travel to be with my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, with little time to read. There was a lot of visiting and eating! In a little more than a week, I'll be seeing them again because my grandson, Carter, is graduating from the University of Kentucky, a semester early! Is December busy? Absolutely. I have yet to do anything about Christmas. But I have read some great books over the recent weeks! Take a peek!

         I shared this book last week on Poetry Friday! It will be a gift just right for someone you love. The link is here!

       Thanks to Kathryn Erskine for my copy of this special book, set during the Civil Rights era, the story of Red Porter, a middle-school-aged boy who struggles through grief after the recent death of his father, the questions of why certain families seem to hate his family, and why he can no longer be a friend to an African-American boy with whom he played and played in their earlier days. Red's attempts to make things right, to stay in their home when his mother is determined to move, to help friends is shown so beautifully through Kathryn Erskine's text of Red's thoughts. He knows from his Dad that running away from things is not the way to be. Though it's so hard to face the truth, Red, young as he is, takes it all on, even becoming a super older brother to his younger brother, J, a real pain, until he isn't! So many characters play a part, good and bad, in Red's growing up, including a thoughtful teacher and a family friend who helped run their convenience store. It's a beautiful story! 

        Come along down memory lane with Charles Dickens where Nick Manning and Brita Granstrom start at his beginnings, all the way to his passing, offering his own words, then further explanations in comic-style boxes. I haven't read every piece or book he wrote, but many are featured with the connections that make the stories even more precious. It's a lovely, brief collection that can serve as an introduction to this most well-known writer all over the world. The endpapers show a map of special places in Dickens' life and novels and there's backmatter with additional sources, a glossary of terms people may not know, like "blacking" which is boot polish, a list of his works, and more!