Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

by Lewis Carroll
published: HarperCollins, 2010 (first published 1865)
pages: 129

Alice is a normal little girl, who doesn't like to read anything that doesn't have pictures in it.  She also doesn't like to just sit around.  One day while she is force to do both, she see a quite peculiar white rabbit in a waistcoat and follows him down a hole.  Alice's day changes drastically as she adventures in a most enchanted land, full of unique creatures and all sorts of trouble. 

I have always really enjoyed the animated Disney movie and the recent live action version.  Alice's story has intrigued me, but I hadn't gotten around to actually reading it before now.  It's a shame. I think what really pushed me to read this was a book called Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin which I read and reviewed in August.  I figured since I had immersed myself in everything Alice, but hadn't read the actual story, it was about time.  And boy, I wasn't disappointed. 

This story is whimsy and mystical and all sorts of strange.  I love the sense of fun I got when reading this book.  The characters are all strange, but wonderful in their own way.  The white rabbit with his pocket watch, and Alice only thinking him strange when she realized that she'd never seen a rabbit with a pocket watch and had never known that they had waistcoats to put their pocket watches in.  The descriptions are just as whimsical as the characters themselves.  The mock-turtle, for which mock-turtle soup is made from, is a turtle who has become a mock-turtle. He sings and tells sad stories of his past.  

All of these beautiful images come for Lewis Carroll's mind and they are spectacular.  He speaks to all ages with this story.  The imagination is captivating and beautiful.  I can't wait to read the rest of Carroll's work. 

Stars: 5/5

Praise: 

"By any reckoning...[one of the] most original works of fiction to emerge from that strange and orginal time known as Victorian England."
     --Guardian (London)

"At once a biting social and political satire sufficiently complex to satisfy the most sophisticated adult and a delightfully whimsical fairy tale to capture the fancy of the imaginative child."
     --Masterpieces of World Literature