Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol Level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library

Ebenezer Scrooge is a cross, miserable, mean old man. When his nephew visits him on Christmas Eve to wish him a merry Christmas, Scrooge is not at all pleased. Bah! Humbug! he says. Christmas is humbug! Everyone who goes around saying Merry Christmas should have his tongue cut out. Yes, he should!

Oh yes, Scrooge is a hard, mean man. His clerk, Bob Cratchit, gets only fifteen shillings a week, and has to work in a cold little office, with a fire too small to warm even his toes.

But that Christmas Eve Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his long-dead partner, Jacob Marley. And after him come three more ghostly visitors It is a long night, and a frightening night, and when Christmas Day finally arrives, Scrooge is a very different man indeed.

OXFORD BOOKWORMS LIBRARY
Classics

Stage 3 (1000 headwords)

Series Editor: Jennifer Bassett
Founder Editor: Tricia Hedge
Activities Editors: Jennifer Bassett and Alison Baxter

CHARLES DICKENS

A Christmas Carol

Retold by
Clare West

Illustrated by
Ian Miller

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First published in Oxford Bookworms 1996

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ISBN 978 0 19 479113 7

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of A Christmas Carol is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479094 9

Printed in Hong Kong

Word count (main text): 10,385 words

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e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478671 3

e-Book first published 2012

STORY INTRODUCTION

1 Marleys ghost

2 The first of the three spirits

3 The second of the three spirits

4 The last of the spirits

5 The end of the story

GLOSSARY

ACTIVITIES: Before Reading

ACTIVITIES: While Reading

ACTIVITIES: After Reading

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE BOOKWORMS LIBRARY

It is important to remember that Jacob Marley was dead. Did Scrooge know that? Of course he did. Scrooge and Marley had been partners in London for many years, and excellent men of business they were, too. When Marley died, Scrooge continued with the business alone. Both names still stood above the office door: Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people who were new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. He did not care what name they called him. The only thing that mattered to him was the business, and making money.

Oh! He was a hard, clever, mean old man, Scrooge was! There was nothing warm or open about him. He lived a secretive, lonely life, and took no interest in other people at all. The cold inside him made his eyes red, and his thin lips blue, and his voice high and cross. It put white frost on his old head, his eyebrows and his chin. The frost in his heart made the air around him cold, too. In the hottest days of summer his office was as cold as ice, and it was just as cold in winter.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with a happy smile, My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No poor man asked him for money, no children asked him the time, no man or woman ever, in all his life, asked him the way. Animals as well as people were afraid of him. Dogs used to hide in doorways when they saw him coming. But what did Scrooge care! It was just what he wanted. He liked being on the edge of peoples busy lives, while warning everyone to keep away from him.

One Christmas Eve, old Scrooge was working busily in his office. It was cold, frosty, foggy weather. Outside it was already dark, although it was only three oclock in the afternoon, and there were candles in all the office windows. The fog covered everything, like a thick grey blanket.

Scrooge kept his office door open, in order to check that his clerk, Bob Cratchit, was working. Bob spent his days in a dark little room, a kind of cupboard, next to his employers office. Scrooge had a very small fire, but Bobs fire was much smaller. It was very cold in the cupboard, and Bob had to wear his long white scarf to try to keep warm.

Merry Christmas, uncle! God bless you! cried a happy voice. Scrooges nephew had arrived.

Bah! said Scrooge crossly. Humbug!

Christmas is humbug! Surely you dont mean that, uncle? said his nephew.

I do, said Scrooge. Why do you call it merry Christmas? Youre too poor to be merry.

Well, replied the nephew, smiling, why are you so cross? Youre too rich to be unhappy.

Of course Im cross, answered the uncle, when I live in a world full of stupid people like you! You say Merry Christmas! But what is Christmas? Just a time when you spend too much, when you find yourself a year older and not an hour richer, when you have to pay your bills. Everyone who goes around saying Merry Christmas should have his tongue cut out. Yes, he should!

Uncle! Please dont say that! said the nephew. Ive always thought of Christmas as a time to be helpful and kind to other people. Its the only time of the year when men and women open their hearts freely to each other. And so, uncle, although Ive never made any money from it, I think Christmas has been and will be a good time for me! And I say, God bless Christmas!