Reviews-

• 

  October 1, 2003
  Bah, humbug! Just in time for the holidays, actor Jim Dale reads a new, unabridged version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It's a natural extension for Dale, who is the voice of the Harry Potter audiobooks and who also takes the stage in New York City later this month as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol: The Musical. The audiobook, for which Dale created 23 voices, is available on both CD and cassette. Watch for Dale as Scrooge on a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, too.

• Put Hagrid, Dumbledore, and Moody out of your mind and revel in the story of Scrooge, some choice spirits, and the lushness of Dickensian prose, winningly articulated by Harry Potter narrator Jim Dale, who rescues A CHRISTMAS CAROL from the cloying sweetness of many cinematic interpretations. Fezziwig, Bob Cratchit, Jacob Marley, the spirits, and even Tiny Tim are accorded their unique characterizations. The versatile British actor's performance of Scrooge as he discovers that his body is left abandoned on a denuded bedstead is as raw and real as when the classic tale was written in the closing weeks of 1843. Dale makes us believe in the Scrooge whose spark has been quenched and carries us along as we watch the various spirits blow the ashes into embers, and the embers into a merry blaze of timeless Christmas cheer. E.E.E. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2004 YALSA Selection 2005 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
• All of the remembered and cherished pleasures of A CHRISTMAS CAROL are present in this wonderful reading by John Lee. His warm voice with its hint of Scottish accent is reminiscent of winter nights and crackling fires and good stories told aloud. There are none of the typical sound effects or musical interludes in this version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and it doesn't need them. The story and the fine narrator suffice. Lee reads clearly and emotively, encouraging the listener to relish the poetry of Dickens's language, and to delight in the drama and humor of the tale. Give this to yourself, then add to the pleasure by sharing it with the entire family. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
• Anton Lesser delivers a fine classic rendition of Dickens's tale. He highlights the fine language and the author's gift for storytelling in a very cultured, elegant production. Lesser's spirits are eerie and poignant; Scrooge and the listener are suitably haunted. High marks, too, for Naxos's signature musical scoring and liner notes. R.F.W. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
• Charles Dickens loved to read his own words to his audiences. Since he can't do that now, he would possibly settle for someone else doing the narration, and he'd be hard-pressed to find a reader more able than Miriam Margolyes. Her rendering of everyone's wintertime favorite, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, is masterfully done, with a remarkable range of vocal talent capturing this tale of Scrooge and his redemption from a miserly existence. She excels at Marley and the three ghosts, making each of them distinctive according to his role in the proceedings as Scrooge visits his past, present, and future. Margolyes is drama personified, loud, soft, plaintive, frightened, annoyed, sorrowful and, finally, rejoicing. Top marks for this one; Dickens would be delighted. T.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
• The radio theater style of the St. Charles Players sets a stage more Hollywood than Victorian. Sound effects and music make a theatrical program. This popularized adaptation succeeds for family entertainment. R.F.W. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
• You may still attend your local theater company's production of A Christmas Carol and catch your favorite version on television, but a holiday celebration can no longer be considered complete without a good listen to Patrick Stewart's audio performance of Dickens's Christmas classic. You get here what you won't get anywhere else: each word of Dickens's remarkable narrative rendered with mesmerizing skill by Stewart. (This leading actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company is best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on television's "Star Trek: The Next Generation"-- a fact which can be used to help entice young revelers to give this version a try.) The experience offered by Dickens and Stewart is so fresh, so rich, so detailed, and so heartfelt, that new traditions will need to be developed: put another log on the fire, gather round the family stereo. This is storytelling at its pure, simple, powerful best. C.T. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
• Charlton Griffin's inspired reading of this 1843 novella should be mandatory holiday listening. In Dickens's hopeful--if supernatural--look at a person's ability to change, Ebenezer Scrooge believes Christmas is a humbug, a way to cheat an honest businessman out of a day's work. One night, he's visited by a ghost wrapped in heavy chains. The ghost of his former partner foretells the coming of three spirits and warns Scrooge to change his ways. Griffin's performance offers a fully realized Scrooge whose bad-heartedness is apparent from the first. Griffin brings warmth to the Cratchit family's cold cottage, and at Scrooge's nephew's home, he makes the party sparkle. Griffin manifests each spirit with its exact essence, and the reformed Scrooge is so genuinely happy that we believe he's a changed man. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
• This enjoyable audio adaptation of the preeminent Dickens classic opens with festive holiday music and features crisp and haunting state-of-the-art sounds: creaking doors, chiming church bells, winter winds, and rattling chains. But what keeps the production grounded and refreshing is that the script stays very close to the heightened language and keen dialogue of the original 1843 text. We all know the dialogue of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim (their story is a part of our cultural DNA), and the cast does an admirable job bringing the sounds of Christmases Past, Present, and Future to life. Though it's been adapted and performed in every imaginable setting and time period, as this production artfully illustrates, A CHRISTMAS CAROL can be most extraordinary when served traditionally. B.P. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
• A reimagining of the classic Christmas story, adapted by narrator Alison Larkin, treats the listener to Dickens's holiday tale--with one change. In this version, the iconic Ebenezer Scrooge is a woman. Larkin's performance skills are superb. She provides an engaging romp through nineteenth-century London at Christmas. Her spirited style infuses the production with flair and personality, breathing life into Scrooge and all she encounters, ghosts included. Furthering the listening experience is the music throughout. Both the instrumental rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" bookending the audiobook and Larkin's own singing between ensure that one cannot help but feel the holiday spirit. A.L.S.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
• 

  Starred review from August 27, 2007
  Dickens's classic holiday tale, like many cultural touchstones, often falls into the trap of perennial reinterpretation. First aired in 1990 but only now available on CD, NPR's presentation serves to place the familiar story back in its historical context. NPR News anchor Susan Stamberg's introduction, along with background information in the liner notes, offers valuable insights regarding both Dickens's gritty backdrop and his role in reviving Christmas traditions otherwise forgotten amid rapid urban industrialization. The script being performed is the same one Dickens used to use at readings. Comedy legend Winters, who serves as narrator while also performing all of the male roles, juggles his duties seamlessly and demonstrates remarkable dramatic range. His portrayal of Scrooge before the ghostly visitations evokes discernable pain and loss beyond the over-the-top antics of an ogre figure. Veteran actress Mimi Kennedy voices the female parts with gusto. With its quality production, attractive price and one-hour length, this release offers the perfect gift and establishes a festive new annual ritual for families to share.

• 

  October 26, 2009
  Helquist's vision of the classic story depicts a hawkish Scrooge (who's a cadaverous shade of green) against a backdrop of bustling Victorian streets, with pleasing touches of detail, humor and a few frightful strokes. When the clock strikes one, announcing the arrival of the first ghost, the moon hangs in an unholy green sky, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stands in a tattered cloak, surrounded by eddying mists (but also draped with strings of Christmas lights). The eye-catching art makes a strong pairing to the accessible abridgment of Dickens's text. Ages 5–up.

• 

  Starred review from December 21, 2009
  This reissued recording of Stewart's touted Broadway performance might prove to be the enduring interpretation of Dickens's beloved tale of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts of past, present, and future who catalyze his transformation. In a production stripped of sound effects, Stewart's theatrical talents take center stage. Reading with a voice that it is at once commanding and fragile, he creates a Scrooge of unexpected complexity and pathos. A spare and dazzling listen that might be the best rendition of the classic since the 1951 Alistair Sim production.

• 

  September 1, 2001
  Lisbeth Zwerger's glorious watercolors for Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, first published in 1988, once again prove that she is as adept at creating the terrifying image of Christmas Yet to Come as she is showing the miraculous transformation of Scrooge.

• 

  September 29, 1986
  Purists may object to this careful abridgement of the holiday classic, aimed at young readers who may not have someone around to read the original out loud. Mayer has retained much of the language of Dickens's work, making sensitive cuts in the text and adding lavish paintings of 19th century England. The charactersmice, rabbits, a reptilian Ghost of Christmas Yet to Comewill draw the youngest pre-Dickensian into the story. The gloomy mood of Scrooge's Christmas Eve gives way to warm, welcoming tints the morning after he is visited by the three Spirits and has learned his lesson. It's a charming alternative to most of the TV adaptations that appear throughout December. (All ages

• 

  November 3, 1988
  A well-loved holiday story, Dickens's slim tale has been opened up on the oversize pages of this new version, similar in format to Zwerger's treatment of The Gift of the Magi. Expanses of white space around and between lines of text give the volume a clean-looking design, which sets off the artist's charm-filled, airy watercolors. And that design is of key importance to the unabridged text, for the book appears accessible to readers just out of the picture book age. This is a fine collector's edition as well; Zwerger has chosen not to represent the three spirits of Christmas, but merely hints at their presence in her pictures. That grounds the story of Scrooge's night firmly in the realm of the almost-real and the possible, and renders his transformation a fully believable phenomenon. Ages 10-up.

• 

  August 29, 1990
  Few of the many interpretations of Dickens's holiday parable can match this handsome edition for atmosphere, mood and sheer elegance. Innocenti's full-page watercolors are striking, full-bodied evocations of 19th-century London, particularly the life and vigor of the city's streets: merchants sell their wares, urchins tumble and play, the gentry ride in their carriages, and the destitute huddle in doorways and keep warm at makeshift stoves. At the same time, the paintings' realism, dramatic intensity, occasional luminosity and almost microscopic observation of detail strongly recall the exquisite art of the Italian Renaissance. Their stateliness is carried through in the book's design: each page of text is boxed with fine sepia rules, overlaid with a delicate, gradually fading wash, and topped by a single, modest ornament. The effect suggests an old manuscript or parchment--one that, every so often, opens a splendid pictorial window on the world of this classic narrative. For all its elegance, however, this is a somber and unsentimental view of Dickens's world. The beautiful and the sordid, the good and the malevolent, are never far apart--a concept that is powerfully suggested through the frequent use of high, oddly angled perspectives, as if readers, along with Scrooge and the spirits, are privy to telling glimpses of life skimmed from above. All ages.

Title Information+

• Publisher

  Duke Classics

• OverDrive Listen

  Release date:

• OverDrive MP3 Audiobook

  Release date:

Digital Rights Information+