Written by Charles Dickens
Read by David Ian Davies
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

The whole of Dickens' classic text is superbly served by Innocenti's paintings of London in the mid-seventeenth century. The artist, using plenty of brown and gray in his full-color palette, depicts the streets crowded with every sort of person--emaciated, hollow-eyed, and ragged, or rich and well-fed--engaged in a multitude of holiday activities. Scrooge's ghosts and spectres, his pathetic dwelling place, and his journey through time are rendered to evoke horror and pity rather than laughter in contrast to Zwerger's much lighter and even humorous treatment (Picture Book Studio, 1988). Text, generously spaced, appears framed on a white page with ochre tints; each page of the five staves or chapters is embellished with a small drawing (pinecone, candle, holly sprig), and the opening of each chapter features a small symbolic picture. A handsome example of the bookmaster's art and one that works well with Dickens' text to bring an historical period as well as the story to life.