Who the Dickens?

I had put off reading Dickens with the kids, thinking them too young still. But a conversation around the table Sunday past had K2, the youngest at 7-11/12ths, asking who Scrooge was and BTG, the oldest at 11-10/12ths telling her he's a duck. OK, so not only are my children illiterate, they also have watched Disney's version of A Christmas Carol too many times. It took me only a few seconds to decide that the time had come to read the book.

Varied were the comments. But mostly negative.

I persisted.

"Marley was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that....Old Marley was
as dead as a doornail."

The surprised looks on their faces as the kidlets actually laughed out loud were as gratifying to me as the fact that they were enjoying the story. I was smug, I admit. "Maybe this won't be that bad after all," CTM says. It makes a mother proud. sigh.

Scrooge is described in sharp, pointy detail on page three.

"He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."

And the clincher for this proud mother: "And to think I thought this would be boring!" (BTG)

Two and a half hours later, with my voice scratchy, the story was interrupted by the return of Pieman. We picked it up again Monday and finished it Wednesday. Not one word was missed, although I'm sure many of the old English allusions were. But nobody seemed to mind. There was silence when I finished. The spell was complete.