Description Provoked by the horrors he saw every day, Charles Dickens wrote novels that were originally intended as instruments for social change - to save his country's children. During his young life, Dickens witnessed terrible things that stayed with him and after his family went into debt and he found himself working at a shoe-polish factory, Dickens soon realized that the members of the lower class were no different, and, even worse, were given no chance to better themselves. It was then that he decided to use his writing ability to tell the stories of those who had no voice. By the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award-winning author of Orphan Train Rider.