By Lewis Carroll
Price: $7.95 - $24.99
Product Description
Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new.
" There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.
For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter
Product Details
- Format: Kindle Edition
- Print Length: 86 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publisher: Public Domain Books (May 1, 1997)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000JQV3QA
Wonderland revisited Spanish illustrator Angel Dominguez fills an unabridged edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with 75 watercolors, most of them closely packed with lush oversized flowers, strange creatures and winding vines reminiscent of Art Nouveau-often against bizarrely serene pastoral backgrounds. Exotic birds and animals, such as peacocks and zebras, wander through the picture frame. While the illustrations bring out the text's absurdity, pretty-in-pink Alice provides a counterpoint not of normalcy but of sentimentality.
Grade 4 Up-- Edens has compiled and arranged illustrations from 25 editions of Alice in Wonderland published in the early to mid-1900s. The result is a fascinating look at a variety of illustrative styles. This is far less jarring than one might expect because the original illustrator, John Tenniel, has so strongly influenced his successors that their interpretations are often similar in design. In fact, the fascination in these pictures is the differing details--Alice's dress, her hairstyle, and her expressions tell much about the time period and the artist's viewpoint. Edens has also done a fine job of integrating the pictures with the text. He varies interest by utilizing full-page plates, half plates, vignettes, and even reducing some illustrations to fit the design so the book flows fairly well and these myriad illustrations blend into a whole rather than distract the eye. The reproduction is excellent. A must for collections with historical interest in children's literature and large libraries.
British illustrator Oxenbury, best known for her acclaimed depictions of baby and toddler life, has undertaken the ambitious challenge of illustrating Carroll's classic dreamscape. This is the second new edition of Alice this season, and though it is a welcome addition, it suffers a bit by comparison with Lisbeth Zwerger's version . Oxenbury's Wonderland is a soft, beautiful springtime world that is a pleasure to observe, but it lacks Zwerger's sense of mystery and Carroll's intellectual angularity. As for Oxenbury's Alice, she's pretty and blonde, but she lacks personality and may be too jarringly contemporary in appearance for some readers. Nevertheless, Oxenbury is a brilliant watercolorist, and her pictures are beautifully designed, as is the book itself. The thick, elegant, cream-colored paper is a visual and tactile delight. Michael Cart
