Charles Dickens scenes in "The Pickwick Papers" are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that "Great Expectations" was more seditious than Marx's "Das Kapital". The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes ("Bleak House", 1853; "Little Dorrit", 1857; "Our Mutual Friend", 1865), not only underscored his almost preternatural ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured
Snowflake Bentley (book) Snowflake Bentley (book) Snowflake Bentley is a children's picture book written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and illustrated by Mary Azarian. Published in 1998, the book is about Wilson Bentley, the first known photographer of snowflakes. Azarian won the 1999 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations. "Snowflake Bentley" is a medium size book, measuring 10 ½ by 10 ¼ inches, and has 16 pages of illustrations. Majority of the pictures are large colorful prints, which is the typical art style of artist Mary Azarian, and each picture summarizes the wording for that page. Many of the pages have a vertical side bar