stories. Excellent plots and characters, and truly a pleasure to see as a movie or a play adaptation. But READING Dickens? Well, let's just say that it's easy to see he was paid by the word.

When my daughter's class was assigned "A Christmas Carol", she was excited to finally be reading a book about something she liked - Christmas!!! I warned her essentially what I stated above. Great stories, but incredibly verbose. Throw in the old english words that she's having some trouble with and she's no longer enthused.

"He spent 3 pages just repeating, in different ways, that Marley was dead. Definitely dead. Dead for all these years. Couldn't possibly not be dead."!!

"He described Scrooge for over 2 pages, including 'an undercooked potato lump.'!!

I told her she'd have to struggle through it.