The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was the fictional publication that really made the name of Charles Dickens famous. After his reasonable success with descriptions and written sketches of London life (Sketches by Boz) in 1833-36, Dickens gained a popular following and the beginnings of a loyal audience thanks to the increasing success of The Pickwick Papers.

His publishers commissioned Dickens to provide the text for a picture novel about unsuccessful, bumbling sportsmen, with the pictures supplied by Robert Seymour. But rather than wait to be given illustrations to describe, Dickens began writing his descriptions before anything had been drawn and so, increasingly through The Pickwick Papers, his words took precedence over the illustrations. Seymour, who had originally proposed the idea of a series of illustrations of city-dwellers inexpertly hunting etc., shot himself before the second installment's publication – though that probably wasn't just due to Dickens's increasing level of artistic control.

Churches often are perceived as open, welcoming environments. Many times, that's what they are. But congregations, without even realizing it, sometimes make themselves inhospitable to impoverished people.

Many of us in the church genuinely want to be available to those in their communities who are experiencing poverty. However, churches are often operated with a middle-class mentality. This middle-class mode of thought makes it difficult for those from poverty to assimilate into the congregation. In What Every Church Member Should Know about Poverty, Payne, a national expert on poverty, and Ehlig, an ordained minister, use stories to help illustrate the way people from poverty view middle-class churches. They then provide solutions and tactics to teach church members and leaders some of the special considerations that can be afforded the disadvantaged. One recommendation, for example, is that congregations reach out to the poverty-stricken in a way that shows mutual respect and not a sense of charity.

There's a reason why many consider The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be one of the great - if not the greatest - American novel. It broke many of the literary rules of its time and thus set the pattern for much of American literature ever since. It's told in first-person dialect by a great-hearted but ignorant bumpkin of a boy who understands far less than the reader but who knows how to follow his heart over his head. And it deals forthrightly, and scathingly, with racism, the great American problem.

Those who attempt to ban this book (and it is one of the most frequently challenged, year after year) can't see the forest for the trees. They see the liberal use of the "N"-word and assume it's racist, when in fact it's just the opposite - it's a powerful, and powerfully moving, statement against racism (as well as slavery, war, and a host of other American problems). Despite its flawed final section, when Tom Sawyer reappears and the author reverts to the style of that lighthearted, lightweight book, this remains, more than 100 years after its publication, a book that every American could profit from reading.