In winter, spring, summer, and fall, Frog and Toad are always together. Here is a wise and wonderful story for each seasonof the year-and one for Christmas, too.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it be haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it." Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. December, 1843.
After Shakespeare, Charles Dickens is the writer in English whose effect on the world’s readers transcends the apparent limits of literature and so teaches us that imaginative invention itself can be a form of life. Together with The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol seems as though it has always been there, just as Hamlet and Falstaff give us the strong illusion they did not require Shakespeare’s art to have awarded them life.
In a house in Oxford three people are having breakfast - Carol, her husband Jan, and his father Josef. They are talking about Prague, because Carol wants them all to go there for Christmas. Josef was born in Prague, but he left his home city when he was a young man. He is an old man now, and he would like to see Prague again before he dies. But he is afraid. He still remembers another Christmas in Prague, many long years ago - a Christmas that changed his life for ever...