Not Really for Children

Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is one of the great classics of English literature, a book which a generation ago I would have assumed all educated speakers of English had read. Now, however, there are so many books to read, that even a great classic can get lost. Furthermore, many people who were forced to read it while still in high school when its length, vocabulary, and age combined to make reading it a chore instead of a delight do not appreciate it. If you have not read David Copperfield or have not read it since high school, I would urge you to give it a try from an adult perspective. David Copperfield chronicles a boy growing up. We see him first as a pampered child, but his comfortable life with his widowed mother is disrupted by her second marriage and then her death. From then on, young David is forced to become one of the hardest working characters in literature in order to achieve the happy ending that we feel he deserves. When I first read the book, I was overwhelmed with the detail and simply plowed through to the ending even if parts of it did not make sense, but now that my own youth is well passed, the young David makes far more sense to me than it did when I was of an age with him. Give it a try, you will be glad you did.