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A World Full of Dickens Stories

by Angela McAllister

4 out of 5 ๐ŸŒŸDetailed stories with brilliant illustrations

‘A World Full of Dickens Stories’  are kids-friendly versions of Dickens' novels including these most famous like 'The Tale of Two Cities', 'The Christmas Story' or 'Oliver Twist' and the ones I didn't hear of before - 'The Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Nicholas Nickleby' and a couple more. Overall, is a good selection of his work that focuses on children and young adults as the central characters. Each story is generously decorated with brilliant illustrations by Jannicke Hansen. 

The book combines eight of Charles Dickens' novels that are compressed to about 15-page short stories which at times makes histories hard to follow with action jumps and a variety of personalities. To help the reader to keep up with all the characters, each work starts with an introduction page where all story cast is listed with a brief description and their portrait. Very nice and helpful touch!

Reading 'A World Full of Dickens Stories' all at once may not be the best idea to befriend kids with Charles Dickens, mostly because his works tend to be repetitive when read in a row. The stories are pretty long and compressed with almost all the details, in consequence, they're a bit dry. My idea when I reached for this book was to see a simplistic retold version of each novel.

Overall, wonderful illustrations turn reading 'A World Full of Dickens Stories' into a pleasure. And detailed stories (recommended to read one-at-a-time) provide great entertainment also encouraging to explore the large variety of Dickens' Literary Universe. 

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and feelings are my own.

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