A retelling for curious readers ages 6–8 of Charles Dickens’s ghost story: on Christmas Eve the miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by his dead partner Marley and three Spirits, who show him his past, the Cratchit family’s Christmas and Tiny Tim’s fate, and his own lonely grave, until he wakes on Christmas morning a changed man.
Read first 4 pagesThe opening of A Christmas Carol: A Retelling for Curious Readers, free to read.
Marley was dead, to begin with. For seven years Ebenezer Scrooge had run their business alone, without one tear for old Jacob Marley. On the street, a little dog saw him and hauled its owner the other way. People stepped aside too. Tight-fisted old Scrooge loved only money.
Bob Cratchit cupped his cold hands around his candle. His fire was down to one coal, and Scrooge guarded the coal box. Bob was Scrooge’s clerk in the counting-house, the office where Scrooge counted money. That foggy Christmas Eve, the door banged open. “A merry Christmas, uncle!” “Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!” He meant, “Nonsense!”
Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, bounced in, rosy from the cold. “Christmas a humbug, uncle? You don’t mean that! It is a kind, forgiving, happy time. Come and have dinner with us tomorrow!” Scrooge said no, and no again. Fred only wished him a merry Christmas again.
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