Katie and the Christmas chimney. Hello, this is Natasha, and I'm here with a

Christmasy story about one of the most popular characters on story nori. Katie

the ordinary wit. In history lessons Katie and her class were studying the time of

Queen Victoria, who reigned over Great Britain from 1837 to 1901. It was an

amazing period when engineers built tunnels, bridges and railways and explorers

tracked through the jungles and writers turned out some of the best novels and

poems ever. But Katie's history teacher, Mr. Old, only seemed interested in all

the bad stuff. For homework, everyone had to prepare a project on how terrible

it had been to be a child born into Victorian times. Katie researched Victorian

schools. It seemed that education in those days meant one thing, suffering. The

teachers of days gone by made Miss Vile seem like a pussycat. They reveled in

beating children with thin canes and making them kneel for hours on a stone

floor. The only good thing you could say about going to school in 1800s was that

it was better than the alternatives, which if you came from a poor family could

be pretty gruesome. For example, some children as young as six worked as chimney

sweeps. Their lives were so terrible that Katie's best friend Isis was close to

tears when she presented her findings on them to her class. She explained how

small children had to climb up chimneys scraping their hands and knees,

getting covered in sweat and always at risk of getting stuck there. Sometimes if

they were too slow, the master sweep would light a fire to hurry them up. When Isis

had finished relating all this, Mr. Old gave everyone a chance to ask questions.

Samantha put up her hand and said,

...