Oliver Twist

By Stewart Ross and Alex Paterson

Oliver Twist is an orphan. After escaping a cruel workhouse for the poor, he comes to live with the criminal Fagin, the sneaky Artful Dodger, and a group of pickpockets. Will he be a street urchin forever?

This heartwarming tale has been retold and adapted with new illustrations, making it perfect for younger readers aged 4+.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: Sep 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781838577988

Stewart Ross

As well as fiction and non-fiction titles, Stewart Ross has written prize-winning books for children (his book The Story of Scotland won the Saltire Society prize). Stewart Ross has written many books including Solve it Like Sherlock and The First of Everything for Michael O'Mara Books.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Workhouse Boy

At the beginning of our story, almost two hundred years ago, a young woman is lying in the street. She is very pretty but also very poor and very sick. She is expecting a baby.

No one knows her name.

She is carried into a workhouse, the ugly building for poor people without a home. That night, she gives birth to a baby boy—and dies. Her only jewels, a ring and locket, are stolen.

Poor little baby boy! His father had disappeared, and now he has no mother. In other words, he is an orphan. It is not a very happy start to life.

Mr. Bumble, the fat, bossy man running the workhouse, names the orphans born there. He does this in alphabetical order. Since he named the last baby Swubble, beginning with S, the next has to begin with T—so he chooses Twist. Oliver Twist.

For the first nine miserable years of his life, Oliver is cared for by a matron. To be honest, she doesn’t care for him at all. He sleeps in a coal cellar, and she gives him just enough food to stay alive.

*

On his ninth birthday, Oliver was returned to the workhouse. There, he lived with other poor and wretched boys. Mr. Bumble did not send them to school. Instead, he gave them hard, boring work to do.

All day long, the boys sat taking apart old rope. Their fingers were red and raw. If they made mistakes or didn’t work hard enough, Mr. Bumble beat them.

At mealtimes, the boys were given a bowl of thin porridge, known as gruel. They grew thinner and thinner, hungrier and hungrier. Oliver feared that one of the bigger boys was hungry enough to eat him!

They decided they must do something or starve to death. One of them would tell the cook what they all wanted. They drew lots