Date with Dickens

Above: Charles Dickens, Courtesy Cambridge University Press.

Charles Dickens is pretty inaccessible as bedtime literature for children under the age of eleven. Translate the books to the silver screen though and it's a different story.

Take a trip to your local video store, stock up on popcorn and settle down for an afternoon of poverty, dirt, crime, child labour and the odd ghost.

The 1951 film version of 'A Christmas Carol' will whisk your youngster back to the grim old days on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, when children really knew their place.

It's suitable for eight year olds upwards, avoiding as it does the bloody murders of that other celluloid classic, 'Oliver Twist'.