A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens, 1843.
Before you read: Ghosts and poverty. Fine for many children; pause if a scene feels too sad.
Ebenezer Scrooge likes money and dislikes Christmas, charity, and his clerk Bob Cratchit. On Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his partner and by three spirits who show him his past, other people’s present, and a future he is walking toward. Dickens wrote the book quickly, for money and for a point: a rich man in a poor city is making a choice every day. The ghosts are the machine. The Cratchit family is the reason the machine exists.
Public-domain text.