From Booklist
Gr. 5 and up, younger for reading aloud. There's a new version of
A Christmas Carol on every holiday list, but this one is special. It is Dickens' own performance text, cut and adapted by him for reading aloud in 90 minutes. All the great lines are here (well, almost all), including Scrooge's ever contemporary advice on what to do with the poor ("Are there no prisons?" ). The book's spacious design, with thick paper, clear type, and 21 sepia-tone illustrations done in watercolor and colored pencils, is great for group sharing. The pictures are comic and scary but never overwhelming. They pick up the theatrical, larger-than-life scenarios: the brooding, scowling miser alone at his desk; the ghostly visitors; the Cratchit family ecstatic over Christmas dinner.
Hazel Rochman
Book Description
An abridged version of the Christmas classic, condensed by Dickens himself for public readings more than 150 years ago, is enhanced with twenty-one brilliant illustrations by celebrated
New Yorker artist Carter Goodrich.
