A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Over 150 years old, it is no surprise that Dickens’s classic tale is filled with details and references that have become obscure—and so, voila! This sumptuous new edition, originally published in France, is printed on coated stock and well-supplied with marginal notes. It includes small but clear contemporary street scenes, title pages, documents, a mid–19th-century map of London, even reproduced portions of the original manuscript, all designed to give readers a literary and historical context for the story’s creation and events. Readers will come to know more about Dickens, too, since many of the notes refer to the connections between his life and his writing. Moreover, Geldart’s homey, soft-lined new art complements the selected examples of John Leech’s 1843 illustrations nicely to track Scrooge’s changes. More colorful, if less scholarly, than The Annotated Christmas Carol (1989), this is not only well-suited to assignment-driven reading, but is likely to entice some new young fans into the Dickensian fold. (Fiction. 11+)