Young Scrooge – A Very Scary Christmas Story

R. L. Stine's Young Scrooge is a very scary Christmas story for 9 year olds, told by a boy who thinks he's the funniest kid in school.

What happens

Rick Scroogeman is twelve and he doesn't just dislike Christmas. He hates hates hates it (his words, from his class essay). Christmas Day is also his birthday, so he gets one lot of presents instead of two. And every year the class watches the old black-and-white A Christmas Carol and calls him Scrooge.

He warns you right at the start that this is a ghost story. Ghosts, he says, are the only thing he's afraid of.

The trouble is Rick himself. He thinks he's hilarious. His idea of a dancing lesson is stamping on someone's foot. He copies a classmate's stutter in front of everyone, shuts him in his locker and lets ants loose in the costumes for the school Christmas play. The head even shows him a film about a bully, and Rick thinks the bully is cool.

So is it fun to read? Actually, yes! Rick is so pleased with himself that your reader will see straight through him long before he does. Every time he stops to say how funny he's being, you can feel the book waiting for him to get what's coming.

There are jokes for grown-ups too. The school is Oliver Twist Middle School, the teachers include Miss Dorrit and Mr Pickwick, and when Marley's ghost finally turns up in the attic, he's come to the wrong house. He's after a boy called William Delaney across the road.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Rick is a real bully for a long stretch, and some of what he says about other children, their stutters and their size is nasty. His dad died the year before (that's backstory, not something that happens in the book). And he's not wrong about the ghosts being scary.

For a child who has been picked on, those early chapters might be uncomfortable. For a reader who loves a bad kid who's plainly heading for a fall, it's a great one for the run-up to Christmas.

What to read next

If they like their Stine ghosts with plenty of laughs, try Who Let the Ghosts Out. It's the first Mostly Ghostly book, and it opens with a brother and sister walking home in the dark, wondering why nothing feels quite right.