Ebenezer Clinton Scrooge III presides over a vast media empire from his New York headquarters, the massive Intersrellar Inc building that dominates the city skyline.
He is a man who shuns the limelight yet wields the power to influence the lives of millions across the globe.
This Christmas Eve his life is about to descend into a nightmare at the centre of which is a girl with auburn hair.
The Review:
My Ranking: 7 out of 10
Ages 13 & up
A Christmas Carol: Revisited was an interesting short story that was easy to dive into. Being only 62 pages long, I finished it in just over an hour - including time spent in between helping my brother's with their occasional math problems. It was neat to read Dicken's A Christmas Carol retold in a contemporary style. While it reminded me a bit of Bob Hartman's Carol: A Story for Christmas, it really was a unique story for being based off of another book. It held the many great lessons of the original story while at the same time adding new ones to the pile.
The characters in Rowland's book were somewhat easy to connect to and relate with for it being such a small book. I liked how Scrooge's family - his sister, nephew, wife, etc. - were included in the story. I felt sad as I read through Scrooge visiting his past - proving that Rowland's did a great job of pulling emotional strings.
The only thing that bugged me in this book is Rowland's overuse of adjectives and big words. As the writing world goes, using the simplest form of a word is always the wisest to use, and adjectives are to be used sparingly or you'll lose the reader's attention when they run off to find a dictionary. In the beginning, I was repeatedly having to backtrack and reread sentences, and occasionally had to pull out the dictionary to discover the meaning of his phrase. While I don't mind this as I love learning new words, it did quickly become bothersome to not know what he was talking about. But as I progressed, the writing smoothed out and I was able to read it easier.
As for content, there is little to tell. At the beginning there is a mentioning of teens only interesting being in drugs and sex, but that is the extent of the mentioning. There was a bit of profanity, but only a words that I caught - 4 mentions of the word "damn", once in it's true definition. Other than that, this book was clean.
Next time you think about cuddling up under your favorite blanket with steaming hot cup of cocoa during the holidays, keep A Christmas Story: Revisited in mind! If you enjoyed Dicken's A Christmas Carol, you'll love this book.
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