Resources: Classic text revisited ... Great Expectations CharlesDickens, 1861

In many ways this is the quintessential Young People Now reader's book.

In its opening few chapters we have melodrama and fairy tale, but we get piercing insight into the interplay of family, community and the individual. Through characters that we can come to love or detest in the space of their first two lines, we get a moving examination of the effects of poverty, class and gender on life chances. And in case anyone is in any doubt that the great writers deal with timeless themes, we get reflections on the impact of teaching basic skills to young adult learners and on vocational against academic routes to employment. Events contrive to give young Pip a glimpse of a different life and he is made to feel disgruntled with the honest toil of his blacksmith apprenticeship. Later, when the hidden hand of his benefactor takes his life into a different orbit, his shame at his humble origins - and his own unease at those feelings of shame - become the heart of the book's drama.