title: The Haunting of Charles Dickens
author:  Lewis Buzbee 
description: Gr 6-8Nineteenth-century London was a dangerous place for children; some were stolen from their families and forced to work in dreadful factories. Young Meg Pickel is not one of these unfortunates; she has a safe home and a loving family, but her teenage brother disappeared six months earlier, and their widowed father appears to have given up hope of finding him. The Pickels are not without resources; their dear friend is the world-famous novelist Charles Dickens, and he joins forces with Meg to solve the mystery of Orion's disappearance. Their search allows readers to tour the city, with its horse-drawn carriages, pubs, heavy fog, pickpockets, and press gangs. Many scenes and characters take inspiration from Dickens's novels. But having the author in the mix is a bit of a deus ex machina; his fame and fortune help the characters through many a tight spot. The tale begins with a fake seance and a real ghost, but Buzbee never revisits or explains these supernatural elements. Instead, he gets the search moving quickly, and the fast pace may help some readers past the flowery, pseudo-Dickensian writing style. Ruth's delightful black-and-white drawings add atmosphere and interest. If historical mystery fans are not quite up for Philip Pullman's Ruby in the Smoke (Knopf, 1987) or Eleanor Updale's Montmorency (Scholastic, 2004), this book could be a good way to work up to them.Geri Diorio, The Ridgefield Library, CT(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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  # The Trial For Murder
  
  
  ### Charles Dickens
  
  
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  I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among
  
  
  persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their
  
  
  own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort.
  
  
  Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise
  
  
  would find no parallel or response in a listener's internal life, and
  
  
  might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller, who should
  
  
  have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea-serpent,
  
  
  would have no fear of mentioning it; but the same traveller, having
  
  
  had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision
  
  
  (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would
  
  
  hesitate considerably before he would own to it. To this reticence I
  
  
  attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved.
  
  
  We do not h