Read by Fred Sullivan

With the same gusto, humor, and dazzling description that light up his fiction, Sid Fleischman produced a quartet of books profiling figures whose talents set the world abuzz-including this one of Charlie Chaplin. There he was, 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 Chaplin. Abandoned by his alcoholic father, neglected by a mother fighting insanity, Charlie Chaplin had escaped the London slums of his tragic childhood and gone on to take Hollywood like a conquistador with a Cockney accent. With his gift for pantomime in films that had not yet acquired vocal cords, he was soon rubbing elbows with royalty and dining on gold plates in his own Beverly Hills mansion. He was the most famous man on earth-and he was regarded as the funniest. Yet Chaplin rose from the slums to the heights only to be driven from the country that had brought him worldwide fame. Never were tragedy and comedy so inextricably mixed as in his too-outlandish-for-fiction life, told with Sid Fleischman's trademark wit and verve. "Fleischman, who died in March at age ninety, left readers with this delightful and informative homage to one of his idols, the silent screen star…'[whose]s footprints were everywhere.' Those footprints turned 'outward so that each angled off like opposite hands of a clock, at ten past ten,' the duck-footed waddle of the Little Tramp, Chaplin's most famous character." "This lively and engaging account of a poor Cockney boy who became the world's greatest silent-movie comedian is a must for biography collections…Brief, easily digestible chapters…make the book's well-researched content accessible and appealing. Add to that Fleischman's playful narrative tone and you have a book as entertaining as Sir Charlie himself." "With a straightforward chronology, the chapters follow the famous comedian from his impoverished childhood in London slums through Hollywood stardom and his final years, when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. As in his previous books about famous lives, Fleischman infuses the narrative with energetic charm, and although the book is thoroughly documented with exemplary source notes, playful metaphors lend an almost tall-tale tone that echoes the humor of Chaplin's work…The author also deftly integrates details of early moviemaking into the colorful accounts of Chaplin's tumultuous personal and professional lives, and he writes with unabashed enthusiasm for Chaplin's work…Young people with a noncurricular interest in Chaplin may be few, but once led to this fascinating, well-shaped, and entertaining title, they may well discover a curiosity about and appreciation for the films that made the great comedian famous…[A] standout portrait." "Fleischman's unabashed adoration for the duck-footed comedian, filmmaker and movie star effervesces from this fascinating…biography. How a nearly illiterate Cockney boy born to London vaudevillians in 1889 became a Hollywood movie mogul is truly one for the storybooks. The author is almost giddy in the telling, as if Chaplin's flair for hyperbole and comic timing were contagious…Movie-history buffs will learn about the effect of 'talkies' on the silent-film industry-and on the pantomime master's ego…[A] colorful homage to 'the funniest man on earth.'" "Will appeal to fans of movie history and surely inspire readers to seek out Chaplin's films." "Drawing the reader in, this author of four true tales of famous entertainers, once again captures interest with tales of exploits, hardship, and success. Written in child-friendly language, one still learns about Chaplin's numerous wives, the claims of anti-Americanism against

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