What Books Are Similar To Charles Dickens' Children Stories?

The Reynard the Fox stories I read are another reason why I love folklore: it’s all about the underdog (be it two-legged or four) outsmarting the bigger, more powerful foes. While not exactly the same sort of tales, The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov features the devil in Moscow, and his pet Behemoth is pure, unadulterated chaos energy, just like Reynard the Fox. Animal tricksters from around the world feature in a plethora of wonderful stories – many Native American tales feature the Great Trickster Coyote, for instance. And there are plenty of African Anansi stories too, all fun, wise and of a high standard. A recently purchased book, Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde, has reinforced my love of such characters and their stories.

Arthur Ransome wrote the classic British children’s book ‘Swallows and Amazons’ – it’s a Tom Sawyer style book where children go sailing, camping and make pretend battles as pirates on a lake in the Lake District. The children are given a huge amount of freedom in the book. For quieter take on independence read ‘My Side of the Mountain’. The main character runs away from home to live in the wilderness. While this book is very different from Mark Twain’s work it also goes back to a time when there were far more possibilities. It suggests that the world is a very big place and that you can go and do anything with it.

If you enjoyed the historical aspect of ‘Typhoid Mary’, you may enjoy ‘The Great Influenza’ by John M. Barry. Another book which combines personal stories with the wider social history, this time covering the 1918 flu pandemic rather than a single person. Plenty of tragedy but plenty of resilience too. Another book on this topic, ‘Patient Zero’ by Marilee Peters, is a YA novel about disease detectives. It is a much lighter read than ‘The Great Influenza’ and ‘Typhoid Mary’ but does give an insight into how much we have learned about illness and how much we still don’t know.

Consider for a moment the fantastical meta-fantasy ‘The Neverending Story’ by Michael Ende. While essentially a story about a boy slowly but surely being consumed by the book he reads, the amazing landscapes of the Story within the Story, Fantastica, are so vivid and perfectly realized for a mature young reader that they include a very compelling Journey, noble Companions, urgent and desperate Quest, and a deeply and profoundly melancholic and philosophical subtext that reveals itself layer by layer on subsequent reads. The transformation of the shy Boy Bastian to confident Boy is that of every reader. Iconic creations such as the Childlike Empress and lucky white scaled dragon Falkor, and the Nothing, all reside within this deep and complex, yet accessibly written tale of loss, ego, and the nature of stories. A growing up book that continues to reveal new layers on subsequent reads by the mature young reader.

The work of 19th-century writers like Dickens is generally OK to use. In the UK, works created longer than 50 years after the author’s death passed into the public domain. If we use the life plus 50 years rule currently used in the UK for works created since 1954, then for example all of Dickens’ works passed into the public domain long ago. In international agreements such as Berne this period is extended in some cases but in general terms the work of writers such as Dickens created in the 19th century is safe to use. (You can even download the whole of his bibliography from Project Gutenberg without violating any copyrights.) The ‘©’ on the cover of a new edition of a Dickens book published by someone like Oxford University Press refers to the particular edition that they have published, not to the work itself by Dickens. In other words, no one holds the copyright on the novels themselves – they’re a beautiful example of how culture becomes a shared, the public domain, commons over time.

Porridge. The porridge of stories, all mashed up into one international comprehension – yes, porridge is the common thread to this trope. When we think of ‘The Goldilocks Zone’, or a ‘Goldilocks economy’ we can thank this brief little morality tale for that perfect tripod of understanding; simple enough for anyone to get to grip with – no princes or magic beans here, just a collection of everyday items and their respective relativity to our everyday experiences. Who hasn’t been irritated by scalding food or an ill fitting seat? These basic human annoyances get channeled into a fantastic mini adventure, for all to follow in sequence. And it’s the simple items themselves that tell the story.

I typically go with very short classic stories that kids can summarize for you within a short amount of time. Stories like ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ and ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ have very clear and immediate lessons that are very good for discipline. ‘The Little Red Hen’ and ‘Stone Soup’ are a couple of my favorite stories to read when discussing issues of responsibility and teamwork as they immediately prompt discussion about consequences of behavior as well as ways to work together as a team to complete a task. I read portions of ‘Pinocchio’ when we are discussing honesty as each chapter or so ends with a scene that I can then stop and have a discussion with the child about. For each story read we like to set up a small challenge for the kids for the rest of the day. I like to make it themed for the story that we just read. So for example, honesty day, a teamwork task for “Stone Soup”, and a stick-with-it challenge for “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. We celebrate all the kids attempts even if they weren’t successful. Occasionally we’ll throw in a Berenstain Bears book too. The kids love these and they are great for providing a modern spin on a classic topic. The Berenstain Bears for example have a great book called “The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Chores”. These books are one of the tools that I use as a parent to try to help the kids have better behavior and they are so effective at keeping the lessons light, memorable and fun.

And then there is fun. How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps is a parody of the RPG genre and of games similar to The Legend of Zelda. The “club” is the party the heroine collects on her journey. It’s short, it’s funny, it contains all the well-known elements of a RPG. This book is not trying to be deep. It’s just lots of fun for gamers and readers of fantasy in general. After having read a long and serious epic, this is the lighthearted, tropey way to a club saving the world. It’s a warm hug and a high-five for you.

'The Institute' by King is a children facing extreme horror story, albeit without Pennywise. It’s interesting to note how a group of kids can form relationships under duress, much like the Losers Club. The children in the story are simply laboratory subjects, and how the system can attempt to break their spirits is real and deadly. That fire extinguisher from Chapter 1 still haunts me to this day, months after I read the book.

There’s a lot of ‘Tigana’ by Guy Gavriel Kay in this query. That’s historical fantasy, and it’s a story of great loss, memory, and identity. A group of rebels are fighting to restore the name of their homeland to a place that was once known by that name. It’s a beautifully written book with very real and flawed characters. It’s not really an adventure story and it’s a pretty sad book in the end, but it’s a beautiful sadness. People fight for all sorts of things and it’s an interesting look at that.