A Christmas Carol

By (author) Dickens, Charles
Short description/annotation

Curl up with ultimate beloved Christmas classic!

''Bah!

But one cold Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives some unusual visitors who show him just how very mistaken he''s been...

BACKSTORY: Learn all about how the author Charles Dickens invented Christmas!

Description

Curl up with ultimate beloved Christmas classic!

''Bah! Humbug!''

Mr Scrooge is a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, miserable old man. Nobody stops him in the street to say a cheery hello; nobody would dare ask him for a favour. And I hope you''d never be so foolish as to wish him a ''Merry Christmas''! Scrooge doesn''t believe in Christmas, charity, kindness - or ghosts.

But one cold Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives some unusual visitors who show him just how very mistaken he''s been...

BACKSTORY: Learn all about how the author Charles Dickens invented Christmas!

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It has it all: a spooky ghost story, a heartwarming redemption and a great plot with a satisfyingly ending
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A story which, perhaps more than any other, sums up the spirit of the British Christmas
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A little masterpiece...irresistible
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Marley''s ghostly face on the knocker of Scrooge''s door still gives me the shivers
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So what makes these different to any other set of classics? In a moment of inspiration Random House had the bright idea of actually asking Key stage 2 children what extra ingredients they could add to make children want to read. And does it work? Well, put it this way...my 13-year-old daughter announced that she had to read a book over the summer holiday and, without any prompting, spotted The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...and proceeded to read it! Now, if you knew my 13-year-old daughter, you would realise that this is quite remarkable. She reads texts, blogs and tags by the thousand - but this is the first book she has read since going to high school, so all hail Vintage Classics!
Biographical note

Charles Dickens was a brilliant and prolific writer, probably the most famous nineteenth century English novelist. He was very successful during his lifetime and his books have never been out of print. The exciting plots and fantastic characters in his books have meant they have all been adapted (in some cases, many times over) for television or the big screen.
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth. He was one of eight children, and at first his family enjoyed a happy life in the countryside of Kent. But Dickens’ father was not very good at managing his money, and when the family fell into financial difficulties they had to move to London. In Dickens’ time people who could not pay their debts were sent to a kind of prison, and Dickens’ father eventually ended up in one of these debtor’s prisons, called the Marshalsea. Charles was forced to leave school and go to work in a ‘blacking factory’ where he pasted labels on to pots for many hours a day. Even though Charles was only twelve at this time, he understood that without education he would never escape the poverty that had so entrapped his family. Charles often used his childhood experiences in his books. For instance, in David Copperfield, the hero Davy is taken out of school by his cruel stepfather and sent to work in a similar factory. Another novel, Little Dorrit, is set in and around the Marshalsea prison.
Fortunately Charles was eventually sent back to school. He went to work as a lawyer’s clerk, and then as a political reporter. In 1833 he began to publish short stories and essays in newspapers and magazines. His first book, The Pickwick Papers, was published in instalments in a