Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol retold by Martin Howard
Ill. by Carlo Molinari and Chris Gould. Hardie Grant
Egmont, 2009.
ISBN 978-192156420-8
This attractively produced picture book version of Dickens' story does
not live up to its early promise.
Martin Howard retells Charles Dickens' classic story of mean Ebenezer
Scrooge's encounter with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and
future and his eventual redemption. The book is lavishly illustrated
with sliders, flaps, add-ins and a pop up centre depicting the ghost of
Christmas present. The text appears in blocks around the brightly
coloured illustrations of Victorian London interspersed with panels of
extra information, recipes and games. What makes this an uncomfortable
format is the density of the text, a lot to read aloud as a story book
and confusingly disjointed when constructing a continuous narrative
from the parts. A lot of the illustrations depict sinister subjects and
sections of the text are quite scary. Unless familiar with the happy
ending, readers dipping into the separate parts of the book could be
left with a worryingly negative view of what should be a happy time of
year.
The pop-ups and extras are not particularly exciting and would make
this a fragile book to have in a school library.
Not recommended for readers under 9 years.
Sue Speck