Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World

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Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 · rating details · 152 ratings · 55 reviews

See him? That little tramp twitching a postage stamp of a mustache, politely lifting his bowler hat, and leaning on a bamboo cane with the confidence of a gentleman? A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens.

Everyone knew Charlie--Charlie Chaplin.

When he was five years old he was pulled onstage for the first time, and he did...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published June 15th 2010 by Greenwillow Books (first published 2010)

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Nov 14, 2010 Melissa Mcavoy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: children-s-books, non-fiction

Where was the editor? This book is full of interesting information, but is often bizarrely breezy in it tone. "As to the romance and impending new marriage, he gallantly dismissed both, brewing up a demitasse of apologies in his autobiography. His new wife became, after all, the mother of their two sons." What does that mean? There is no additional info on what 'gallantly dismissing' looks like. I get that a demitasse of apologies would be a small measure, but would a kid? What is the 'after all...more Where was the editor? This book is full of interesting information, but is often bizarrely breezy in it tone. "As to the romance and impending new marriage, he gallantly dismissed both, brewing up a demitasse of apologies in his autobiography. His new wife became, after all, the mother of their two sons." What does that mean? There is no additional info on what 'gallantly dismissing' looks like. I get that a demitasse of apologies would be a small measure, but would a kid? What is the 'after all' line meant to convey? Why are we shooting back and forth in time? The reader has not even met the woman in question. We learn her name, Lillita McMurray, on the next page. Yet, before she is even introduced as a character, she is married, divorced, twice a mother and hurried into an autobiography. The book is full of passages like this in which the author's excess of familiarity with the subject allow him to leap about in enthusiasm in a way that is difficult for the reader to follow. Fleischman clearly has a lot of info in his head and is passionately interested in Chaplin, but he seems to forget whom he is writing for, and the need to help them care about the subject. The text often feels rushed, as if he dictated it to an uncritical typist. Their are frequent references to celebrities few children will recognize, Gloria Swanson, Hannah Arendt, Typhoid Mary. I'm all for piquing interest in figures from the past, but the often gratuitous nature of Fleischman's asides, and the lack of context he provides, make it very unlikely any reader will bother to follow up. Fundamentally I found this a very sloppy book. The lack of care is a pity, because there is enough here to interest readers in Chaplin's work and convince them that Chaplin was not only a performing comic-genius, but was also a director and artist of great merit, who forever changed and shaped film. Had this book been better edited it could have been a great and meaningful addition. As it stands, I can not believe any child will wade through it.
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Oct 03, 2010 Joan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, ya-books

A few reviewers have complained about language being too hard. Most of it can be easily figured out and the sense of the book won't be lost if kids skip over the few words they may not know. Hopefully they will be curious enough to look those words up and expand their knowledge. Others have complained that the subject matter is fairly obscure. Not all that obscure, really. My own kids, 20 somethings, have watched Charlie Chaplin. Besides, even if the browser (human sort, not computer type) doesn...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Maricor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-and-information

Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World by Sid Fleischman (2010)
In this page-turning biography of Chaplin, Sid Fleischman tells the story of how the speechless Little Tramp was born and stole the hearts of all moviegoers during the great silent film era. The writer captures Charlie's perilous beginnings in the Kennington slums as a poor Cockney and how his life took him to the trademark slapstick skits that thrilled audiences and left them in uproarious laughter. Fleischman takes the...more

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Nov 17, 2010 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Starts out promisingly, with intelligent, engaging writing and excellent research. Mr. Fleischman manages to be thorough in describing Chaplin's early life without being pedantic or dull. The arrangement of the book is very handsome, with an appropriate early-1900s feel to the decorative flourishes and typeface. The book is aimed at young people, but the intended age group is difficult to determine; the author speaks frankly of illegitimate children and occasionally uses mild swear words such as...more Starts out promisingly, with intelligent, engaging writing and excellent research. Mr. Fleischman manages to be thorough in describing Chaplin's early life without being pedantic or dull. The arrangement of the book is very handsome, with an appropriate early-1900s feel to the decorative flourishes and typeface. The book is aimed at young people, but the intended age group is difficult to determine; the author speaks frankly of illegitimate children and occasionally uses mild swear words such as "hell," neither of which I find particularly offensive, but which many parents might find too off-color for younger children.

Chaplin made many mistakes in his life, and I was curious about how Mr. Fleischman would address them--really, I was feeling quite hopeful, given the book's promise. I flipped ahead to Chaplin's first well-publicized incidence of seducing and impregnating a very young girl (17) at the ripe old (comparatively) age of 29 to see if Mr. Fleischman would simply repeat the standard sexist narrative of "She tricked me into marrying her, the hussy!", or if he would, as a modern gentleman of discernment, remember that a 17 year old girl in 1918 had considerably less power and social pull than the world's best-paid comedy star, who was also a man nearly twice her age. I will not go into the details of my disappointment here, but I will simply say that it's fortunate that Mr. Fleischman did not also write about, say, the Polanski rape case. I did not flip ahead to see how Mr. Fleischman discussed Chaplin's increasing rapacity towards younger and younger girls; it is a disturbing subject as it is without further victim-blaming, and I judged it a poor use of my energy.

Perhaps Mr. Fleischman thought that the tender readers of this biography were not able to hear, yet, that a heroic figure like Chaplin is capable of doing wrong--but he thought them old enough to hear about "false pregnancies" and "entrapment," concepts surely far more sordid than the admission that heroes are complicated, messed-up people who sometimes do bad things. At any rate, the book gets two stars from me: one for writing, one for research. I'm docking it three points for forgetting that women are human beings, and for denying male privilege; I'm really, really tired of publishers, authors, and even peers expecting one to give garbage like this a pass because it's "no big deal." If you gather every incidence of this sort of thing--from every book, television show, movie, song--and then you remember that some of this is actually intended for our children, who are even less able to make judgments than adults, one realizes it's actually quite a big deal indeed. We can demand better from the people who produce our educational and entertainment media.(less)

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Oct 22, 2010 Wendy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-award-possibilities

Okay, okay, this was really good. I've never been a Charlie Chaplin fan; I don't care for slapstick. (I do remember enjoying The Great Dictator--I saw several of his movies when I was a kid.) But this is accessible, interesting, and fast-paced. Like most biographies, the first half is best. People have this habit of growing up to be adults with jobs and marriages and stuff, which is generally less interesting than when they're busy pulling themselves up by their bootstraps etc etc.

Fleischman was...more

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Aug 27, 2010 J rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Charlie Chaplin was a fascinating man, and Fleischman does our youth a service by introducing this important cinematic figure to them. He would have done well to remember, though, that teens have probably never heard of Chaplin and are unfamiliar with early 20th century lingo and allusions. There are a lot of terms he never explains, such as "two-reeler", and the language just floors me at times. Imagine you are 12 and try to make sense of this sentence: "With Chaplin's lifetime passion for char...more

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May 23, 2011 Josiah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Near the end of his life, author Sid Fleischman turned primarily from the fictional adventure stories that had made him famous, such as his Newbery Medal-winning The Whipping Boy, to focus on creating biographies of some of the figures of the entertainment world that had always especially captured his attention. What we have learned from this period of Sid Fleischman's writer career, in addition to the treasure trove of information about the subjects of the biographies, is that Sid Fleischman i...more Near the end of his life, author Sid Fleischman turned primarily from the fictional adventure stories that had made him famous, such as his Newbery Medal-winning The Whipping Boy, to focus on creating biographies of some of the figures of the entertainment world that had always especially captured his attention. What we have learned from this period of Sid Fleischman's writer career, in addition to the treasure trove of information about the subjects of the biographies, is that Sid Fleischman is at least as good at penning true stories as he is at writing fiction.

For most people, perspective on silent films equate to the sped-up image of The Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin in character, walking along in his instantly recognizable shuffling gait and tipping his undersized bowler hat in a show of comedic respect. It's not just aficionados of the silent film era that know Chaplin; everybody is familiar with his style to a certain extent, and he continues to be nearly as ubiquitous a presence in pop culture today as he was so many years ago. Sir Charlie is a walking tour through the life of one of Hollywood's greatest screen legends, knowledgeably guided and conducted by an author who grew up during the era of Charlie Chaplin's finest cinematic work, when The Little Tramp was viewed almost universally as the funniest man in the world.

Charlie Chaplin had no rosy childhood, that's for sure. His parents both had jobs in show business, but they were not the most personally stable guardians for a boy and his brother. The father left the family when Charlie was very young, and the mother fought a losing battle with madness throughout her life. Charlie and his older brother, Sydney, bounced around from home to home in London but always lived in great poverty, and there seemed to be little hope that things would ever get better for such a poor Cockney kid from England. Until, that is, Charlie found his way into his mother's stage act when he was a mere five years old; his infectious style of physical and vocal mimicry was a prodigious hit among theater goers, and the start of a long career in the entertainment industry was born.

Charlie Chaplin really received his big break when legendary comedic movie producer Mack Sennett recognized his talent and had him imported to California to work in his studio. At once, Charlie was put on a break-neck shooting pace that had him starring in new movie shorts scheduled to be completed at a rate of about two per week. There was no script, no solid plan for the action, nor even more than a hastily sketched idea of what was generally supposed to happen in the story. The rest was to come from the improvisational skills of the actors, in the hopes that the end product would be something that could be formed into a short film. While it's difficult to imagine that process being used in today's pragmatically rigid film industry, it seems to have been the norm back in those days. To his credit, Charlie Chaplin adapted very well, quickly proving that whatever performing talents were to be most coveted for the silver screen, he had them to a greater degree than anyone else around him.

When Charlie Chaplin eventually created his own movie studio, his creative powers were finally able to hit full stride. Making daring decisions on several occasions that went against the impassioned advice of those who could have reasonably been expected to know best, Charlie began risky film projects that paid off in spades, making mounds of money for himself and his production company, and catapulting him to the top of his profession as perhaps the greatest and most celebrated comedic actor in the world. Mixing together humor and sadness into a single movie, which is so common today, was virtually unheard of back then, yet Charlie Chaplin engineered the mix with the precision of a master chemist, and the results were consistently brilliant. The Kid, released in 1921, is one of the finest movies that I have ever seen from any motion picture era, and is arguably the ultimate example of the depths of achievement reached by Charlie Chaplin at the pinnacle of his illustrious career.

Charlie Chaplin's life certainly was not entirely happy, of course. His family had been fragmented from the time that he was very young, and even in later years they never became as close as a regular family. He never saw his father again after first coming to the United States, and his mother's grasp on her own sanity was always tenuous, at best. Then, there were all of the bad romantic relationships that Charlie had, including a number of failed marriages to ladies from Hollywood's elite sector of society. Charlie never really seemed to have sufficient time for a wife and kids, as devoted as he was to his work, until he found Oona O'Neill, whom he would marry and stay together with for more than thirty years, up until the time of his death. Through all of his success, though, Charlie Chaplin always feared two things: that he would lose his mind as his mother had, or that the vast wealth he had earned over the course of his career in film would somehow become lost, and he would again be as poor as he was as a kid. Even at the zenith of his productivity, Charlie never seemed to be a completely happy person.

I'm glad that Sid Fleischman is the one who wrote this book. The juvenile biography crowd deserved a really good biography of Charlie Chaplin, written with the sensitivity and personal affectedness of an author who lived to see most of it himself. I think that he was able to identify with Charlie Chaplin as more than just a fan of his work, though; this book was almost like the final take of one great artist (Fleischman) on the many final takes of another (Chaplin), as the author came full circle in his own amazing life as a celebrated creative figure to take a last look at a person who had at one time, and still surely did, mean a great deal to him. I believe that to be the true emotional core of this biography, and why one is left after reading it with a lingering feeling of having experienced something powerful.

Sir Charlie is a very good biography that treats its subject with admirable balance. Charlie Chaplin is seen neither as a paragon of perfection or a cad-like beast, but is represented as being fully human, a great artist who found his niche in history to become elevated as something far grander and more affecting than he could have ever logically aspired while living as a youth in the poorhouses of Cockney England. His vibrant legacy lives on in every laugh that is brought on today from any stray comedic bit that has its roots in the numerous stylistic creations of Charlie Chaplin, as most of them do. Other stars of comedy may come and go, be celebrated and then eventually forgotten, but it's doubtful that any will ever have quite the impact of Charlie Chaplin. He was an absolute one-of-a-kind, and his career will never be eclipsed. (less)

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May 26, 2011 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a 2011 nominated book from YALSA. Charlie Chaplin…a funny man? Absolutely! It’s amazing how one can create so much humor and provide entertainment with silent films. He started in the early 1900s and is still well known and mimicked today. Charlie’s childhood was difficult in London. His father abandoned the family (he had one brother) at an early age and his mother was never really stable; she was in and out of asylum homes. Charlie learned quickly and was motivated to succeed despite l...more

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Jul 23, 2010 Kris rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm having trouble evaluating this one. Parts of the book were riveting and well-written, while other parts felt much like reporting. There were some times when the writing felt odd--that I couldn't figure out the references--here's an example from Chapter 4, Life with Father: "One wonders if the bread van had time for the bakery, for it seemed forever on the road with the Chaplin brothers. Now it delivered them like shabbily wrapped packages to their father in a two-room upstairs apartment on r...more

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Dec 31, 2011 Christina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, nonfiction

I love Sid Fleischman's work, and while I didn't think this one was as good as The Trouble begins At 8, his biography of Mark Twain, I did enjoy this biography of actor/director/producer/Hollywood icon Charlie Chaplin. he covers his whole life and handles the affairs and more mature subject matter very deftly for a book for middle schoolers. But I do think Fleischman's vocabulary is always very complex and goes above the heads of most young readers. For that reason, as well as that they might no...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Violet rated it 5 of 5 stars

I decided to do my 2nd quarter book talk on this book, Sir Charlie by Sid Fleischman. I was trying to find a biography book in the library one day, and I happened to see this book on top of the shelves. I picked it up, flipped through the book a bit, and decided to journal about this book. It turned out to be better than I expected it to be. The whole thing was about a man named Charlie Chaplin, who was a famous comedian around the time when televisions were black and white and had no sound. The...more

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Oct 04, 2010 Donna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, history, nonfiction, pop-culture, teen

Chaplin's story is the story moviemaking in America - you can't learn about one without learning about the other. Anyone who dreams of making comedies can learn a lot from Chaplin, and this book has the potential to inspire them to seek out his best works.

There are an abundance of wonderful black and white photographs, including publicity stills from Chaplin's movies, family portraits and news images. The pithy captions help to make browsing informative as well as enjoyable.

The print is large, b...more

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Jan 25, 2011 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, kids, youngadult, nonfiction, 2011reads

Hmm. I found this to be middling. I wonder if part of the problem is that movies and physical comedy are such visual mediums that they're simply difficult to transfer to the written format. The selected photos were excellent, but I didn't feel like I was ever able to get a real sense of the magic that Chaplin must have created on film to become so important historically. I think part of the problem here is that I wasn't overly interested in Chaplin to begin with; it's not a topic that I dislike,...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Clay rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. It was easy enough for me to understand, and it talked about the funniest man of all time. I especially enjoyed his movies when I watched parts of them on Youtube. I plan on watching a couple of full movies of Charlie Chaplin. I didn't know too much about silent movies and the early actors, but now I understand it much better. Slapstick humor is a lot funnier than I first thought. It doesn't sound funny when you read it, but it is funny when you watch it. Charlie has a great s...more

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May 30, 2011 Rory rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs-and-bios, kids

Funny that Fleischman also wrote children's biographies about Houdini and Twain--much like Chaplin, they've fascinated me forever. This was very good; I read it in one [long] sitting.

It got me thinking about why I sometimes prefer biographies geared toward the young to those thicker volumes meant for adults. This didn't shy away from any of the most important stuff (including Chaplin's miserable childhood, tyrannical on-set behavior, McCarthy-era humiliation, and ridicule-worthy romances) but it...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Mark Flowers rated it 2 of 5 stars

OK, so here's my problem with biographies:

Most people (perhaps especially famous people) don't have particularly interesting lives. They have interesting incidents in their lives - but incidents don't add up to a story. To take the current example, Charlie Chaplin actually had far more than his fair share of interesting incidents: insane mother, youth in poverty, rise through vaudeville, scandalous marriages, exile from America. But when you look at his life as a narrative, the overall arch is:...more OK, so here's my problem with biographies:

Most people (perhaps especially famous people) don't have particularly interesting lives. They have interesting incidents in their lives - but incidents don't add up to a story. To take the current example, Charlie Chaplin actually had far more than his fair share of interesting incidents: insane mother, youth in poverty, rise through vaudeville, scandalous marriages, exile from America. But when you look at his life as a narrative, the overall arch is: started out poor, got very very rich and very very famous, and ended up pretty happy. Now, I'm glad for Chaplin the human being that he achieved success, but that's not much of a story.

So, what is really interesting about Chaplin? His movies! And this is the case with all artists. The reason we are interested in artists is because of the art they produced, not because of the facts of their lives. That's not to say that the facts are uninteresting or unimportant to understanding the art (Chaplin's life had a ton to say about his art), but the art still has to be primary, and this is where most biographies fail. We get boring accounts of the process of making the movies, but nothing about why they are important, why Chaplin was important, what it all has to say to us today.

In Jonathan Rosenbaum's new book, Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia, he has an excellent chapter on Chaplin, in which he says this:

"Has there ever been another artist--not just in the history of cinema, but maybe in the history of art--who has had more to say, an in such vivid deatil, about what it means to be poor?"

This single sentence, for me, has more of interest in it than the entirety of Fleischman's book. The tricky part here, is that to fully understand the Rosenbaum quotation, you do need to know the facts supplied by Fleischman (and he does do an excellent job of marshalling the facts). But without having some sort of take on them - some sense of what makes them important (as displayed by Rosenbaum), you just have a list of facts, some interesting, some not.

I'm very happy that we have a well written account of Chaplin's life aimed at kids and teens who have probably never seen a Chaplin film. But I am just not sure that reading this book would make them particularly excited to go out and watch Chaplin.(less)

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Aug 09, 2010 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, non-fiction

I challenge any of the reviewers who gave this book a star rating to ask an average 6th grade student read any page in the book aloud. Then question the student to see how much he or she comprehended. Nine times out of ten, I think they would be saddened by the result. I haven't read Fleischman's other biographies but this one is bad. He employs way too much figurative language for most middle school students. Does every paragraph need to have at least one metaphor? He also throws in too much sa...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Kathy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: j-nonfiction

Born in 1889, raised in Cockney slums and poorhouses after his mother became insane, Chaplin started early in vaudeville and came to the United States just in time to take advantage of the boom in silent films where he acted, wrote, and directed his way to success even beyond that of his "Little Tramp" character. Fleischman's biography is appreciative and beautifully written. It's funny and pathetic, just like its subject. It's full of lines you'd like to quote. Also meticulously researched and...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Marsha rated it 3 of 5 stars

I would really like to say I loved this book...but I didn't. Parts of it were very interesting, I learned a ton, and it made me want to watch a couple of Charlie Chaplin movies, but for some reason I just couldn't sustain a lot of interest while reading it. It was written for young teens, but a lot of the phrases and words Fleischman used made me have to stop and think (I really don't like to do that when I am reading for pleasure), and I am sure they would go over the head of the average sixth...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Jess rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, non-fiction, juv

Sid Fleischman wrote some of the most entertaining biographies I've read - The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West and Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini were both highly entertaining, managing to get me interesting in people I didn't realize I would find fascinating - and he continues in the same vein here with Charlie Chaplin. I know I saw a few Chaplin films as a kid, but I only have a vague memory of them and know Chaplin more for his Little Tramp image than...more

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Nov 21, 2010 Claire Scott rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: disability, middle-grade, overwritten, nonfiction

I'm scandalizing myself by giving this two stars, but I just couldn't stand it. Florid, purple prose and metaphors that often came across as nonsensical. Forget the vocabulary overkill, this read like a parody: obscuring an interesting life with obtuse verbal fussing. Even in the endnotes, for heaven's sake! Felt both pretentious stylistically and condescending in its content. I love biographies because they illuminate a life, and this felt like Fleischman considered his prose stylings to be the...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: grades 6-8

Recommended to Sarah by: 7/8 list and mc

Shelves: nonfiction

Charlie Chaplin dreamed of living a better life while he was stuck in the slums of London with his mother and older brother. He did odd jobs around town to help his family get by; as a teen, one of the jobs he
had was as a slapstick comedy performer in vaudeville acts (variety shows). When his small group was touring America, a director saw his act and signed him to do movies (which were silent and only a few
minutes long at that time).

Charlie soon gained enough confidence in his comedic acting a...more

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Jan 07, 2011 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: kids-nonfiction, biography

A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens. Everyone knew Charlie—Charlie Chaplin. Abundantly illustrated. (Goodreads Sumary)

Sir Charlie Chaplin by Sid Fleischman is an attractive biography that is abundantly illustrated. I enjoyed it & found it well researched & very informative. For it's intended audience, however, it is not as successful. The florid prose & metaphors of Mr. Fleischman, whom I greatly admire, seems over the top for 6-...more

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Nov 25, 2010 Monica Edinger added it

My blog review is here, but I'll paste the text of it here too.

I wasn't going to post here about Sir Charlie , but having found it difficult to comment cogently about it on this Heavy Medal post, I'm going to attempt to try to do so more clearly here. As I've noted here already I'm a long time fan of Charlie Chaplin, have shown his movies to my 4th graders for decades, and for the last year have been researching his life and art for my own book. As a result I read Fleischman's biography of Ch...more

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Aug 11, 2010 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, boy-main-character, historical, t2-2010, teen

I liked Fleischman's bio on Mark Twain better, but I'm not sure if that's due to a more interesting life on Twain's part, or better writing on Fleischman's part. This bio seemed a little drier, but still interesting. There was less adventure, and more politics, and petty grown-up rivalries. Chaplin was married several times, and seemed very temperamental, and I'm not sure that kids today are as familiar with his body of work, which I feel would add interest to this book.

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Dec 13, 2010 Toby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: young-adult

I liked the look and feel of this illustrated biography of Charlie Chaplin, a man that YAs today may not know much about but will recognize by name. It's a hefty book, heavy paper, but lots of white space and photographs, which make it accessible for less skillful readers and also, for those of us who want some background and history, perhaps before attending the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Friday Night at the Movies? without having to find our reading glasses.

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Nov 17, 2010 Phoebe rated it 3 of 5 stars

A good introduction to the life of Charlie Chaplin even though, as is the case with several of Sid Fleischman's biographies, the author seems to have trouble getting out of the way. He uses prose in an unusual and sometimes affected fashion. This aside, this is a clear, readable, and really interesting biography for 6th graders and up. Photos are well placed and the font is big enough so that kids can roll right along, despite the thickness of the book.

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Sep 17, 2010 Jamie added it

Shelves: adult, biography

I put an adult tag on this, even though it's not "marketed" as an adult book, because I really think it's only adults who will like it. I liked it quite a lot, not really knowing a lot about him (and even realizing that I don't think I've seen any of his movies.) But there's no Entrance into it for kids, and even the most kid friendly part of his life (when his body was stolen from his grave) is kind of played down.

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Sep 22, 2012 Kristen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: middle-grade, nonfiction, teen

This biography of Chaplin does a good job of presenting his life and his double-sided genius. It definitely makes the reader want to see as many Chaplin films as possible, especially the early ones filmed between 1915 and 1925. I wasn't much of a fan of Fleischman's writing style, though; it was jumpy and had weird, inconsistent verb tenses which I found somewhat jarring.

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Mar 01, 2011 Shirley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: children-s-books

This book was interesting to read and kept me turning the pages to find out more interesting events in Chaplin's life. However, I kept thinking about how a child would read the book, and it seems more like an easy-to-read book for adults, more than a children's book. A lot of metaphors and references might be confusing or lost on kids who read the book. A fun read though.

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About Sid Fleischman

As a children's book author Sid Fleischman felt a special obligation to his readers. "The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever -- they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work." With almost 60 books to his credit, some of which have been made into motion pictures, Sid Fleischman can be assured that his work will m...more

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Books by Sid Fleischman

The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7266740-sir-charlie?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1267544242l/7266740.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7266740-sir-charlie?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World by Sid Fleischman[/url]

Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World

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