It's Christmastime in London, and overworked Bob Cratchit and his family, including poorly Tiny Tim, find joy and cheer even in poverty. Meanwhile Bob's boss, the selfish, miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge, is deeply bitter about the festive season. However, when Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, the error of his ways is revealed with haunting clarity. Dickens's timeless classic, which has popularised phrases...

In New England in the late nineteenth-century, a fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman and his young son.

"First published in 1843, 'A Christmas Carol' is Charles Dickens' touching fable about Ebenezer Scrooge's conversion from miserable penny -pincher to jovial benefactor. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by a series of ghosts who show him the error of his ways. With this story, Dickens captured the "spirit of benevolence" we now assume to be the essence of the Christmas Season, and immortalized both himself and his protagonist. This beautiful...

"Cutie Grackle is used to being different--she lives alone on a mountain with her feeble-minded uncle, and when she's not sucking pebbles to trick her stomach into feeling full, she's chatting with a weathered garden gnome for company. But having a flock of ravens follow you is more than just different. Cutie worries the birds are connected to the curse Uncle Horace tends to mutter about. And she's right. The ravens present her with a fortune from...

Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to. In this second novel of Wolff's "Make Lemonade" trilogy, 15-year old Verna LaVaughn is visited by Jody, a boy she knew as a child who comes back to the housing project where she lives. Jody behaves as if he's in love with her, but Jody is wrestling with questions...

A retelling of an old tale in which a servant girl's new master insists she use uncommon names for common objects.

Iggy Corso, who lives in city public housing, is caught physically and spiritually between good and bad when he is kicked out of high school, goes searching for his missing mother, and causes his friend to get involved with the same dangerous drug dealer who deals to his parents.

Quentin Blake turns his artistic talents to Dickens' much-loved Christmas story in this beautiful gift edition of a timeless classic. A Christmas Carol is the book that defines the Christmas spirit. Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean-spirited miser, is visited by three ghosts one Christmas Eve. The ghosts show Scrooge the true value of Christmas: charity, good humor, and love for his fellow man. Quentin Blake's distinctive illustrations guide the reader through...

"When Zezé grows up, he wants to be a poet in a bow tie. For now the precocious young boy entertains himself by playing clever pranks on the residents of his Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, stunts for which his parents and siblings punish him severely. Lately, with his father out of work, the beatings have become harsher. Zezé's only solace comes from his time at school, his hours secretly spent singing with a street musician, and the refuge he finds...

"On a bleak Christmas Eve, miserable old Scrooge returns to his gloomy lodgings to spend the festive season on his own as usual. Any invitations to Christmas parties have been flatly turned down. Christmas? Bah! humbug!. But this Christmas night he is visited by four strange spirits, each with a lesson that will change his life forever."--Back cover.