Dickens for kids!

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Updated: March 6, 2012 8:09AM

“He was the best of toms. He was the worst of toms.”

From the start “The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale (Peachtree, $16.95, age 8-12), by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, borrows from Charles Dickens to pull young readers into a story about an unlikely friendship between a cat and a mouse who share the secrets of an English pub.

Dickens himself is a minor character in the suspenseful middle grade novel. He’s seen struggling to write the opening for A Tale of Two Cities. Queen Victoria shows up, too, but it’s Dickens, one of the kings of English literature, who gets his due.

The Victorian writer would have celebrated his 200th birthday Feb. 7. His words and life story continue to inspire, in the best of times and in the worst.

In The Cheshire Cheese Cat, a young mouse named Pip and an alley cat named Skilley share “a mutual love of cheese.” So when Skilley arrives to rid the pub of mice, the pair strikes a deal. Skilley will pretend to eat the mice, who then pay him with edible gold.

But more than one secret propels the plot. The innkeeper’s daughter, Nell, has taught Pip to read and harbors an injured raven with a lofty pedigree. Pip’s love of words helps put the raven back where he belongs, but not before a misunderstanding about a ransom draws the queen to the pub.

Meantime, Skilley must protect his secret, and the mice, from a vicious tomcat named Pinch bent on getting his fill of the furry little rodents. Pinch finds a friend in Adele, the thieving barmaid, and an enemy in Croomes the cook. She has her own reason for turning a blind eye to the strange cat who doesn’t eat mice and to the mice she hopes will eat her cheese.

Readers new to Dickens will enjoy the twists in this lively tale, while those who’ve read the writer’s works will enjoy its Dickensian setting and spirit.

If The Cheshire Cheese Cat isn’t enough to hook a new generation on Dickens, Deborah Hopkinson’s participatory history likely will.

A Boy Called Dickens (Random House, $17.99, ages 4-9) beckons the youngest readers into the life of 12-year-old Charles working in “Warren’s, a blacking factory, which makes polish for gentlemen’s boots.” Charles must work rather than attend school because his father is in debtors’ prison.

Illustrator John Hendrix, using graphite, pen and ink, and fluid acrylics, adds a wonderful sootiness to Hopkinson’s tale of a boy put to work in Old London. His blue fog sky is at once inviting and spooky. His little cloud of candlelight ensures Charles’s “drab room disappears.”

Still Dickens saves the day. To amuse himself and his friends, Charles tells the story of a boy named David who flees work in Murdstone’s warehouse to search for his Aunt Betsey. David Copperfield blooms anew.

“God bless us, every one!”

Leeann Zouras is a California-based free-lance writer.