Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan Classics)

Much better than the video. Much silliness as expected. Cheshire Cat is still the best. Made me want some tea.

Alice in Wonderland was written for children. It is a humorous fantasy novel about a child’s dream world with strange people and animals. The language used is simple and the book contains drawings to make it fun to read. The reader sees Wonderland through Alice’s perspective and listens to her inner-monologues. In addition, the book is divided into episodes and stories. All these different aspects make it an entertaining novel. However, it was written during the Victorian Age, a time when children books had a didactical purpose. That is why this novel is also meant for educational purposes: it describes the growth of Alice from an unruly little girl, always questioning everything, to a wise woman. Another facet of this book is its criticism. Alice was the first child character in English literacy to criticize the world of the grown-ups, showing their hypocrisy and their pride. Indeed, in Wonderland, people, animals and creatures symbolize adulthood. As they think in the most illogical way, the more Alice tries to understand them, the more she gets confused. Finally, Alice in Wonderland was written in a very unusual way. The author used “nonsense verses”, a process of treating logic in an ironic way. It was done by playing strange word games with apparently no signification, presenting absurd rhymes, and asking riddles that had no answer. For instance, many of the names of characters are word games (the Cheshire cat, the March Hare…). Moreover Carroll likes to invent neologisms such as ‘uglification’ or ‘muchness’. They create a singular atmosphere in the book.

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is a great read. The story is told third person, past tense, from the protagonist’s (Alice) point of view. Many films and TV shows have pulled storylines from this timeless classic. One of my favorite Star Trek The Original Series episodes is a fun version of Alice in Wonderland. I’ve been rereading some of my favorite children’s stories that I read during my preteen and teen years. As a middle-aged guy I enjoyed revisiting Beatrix Potter The Complete Tales, Charlotte’s Web, Winnie the Pooh The Complete Tales, Treasure Island, Watership Down, The Wind in the Willows and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as much, maybe even more, than I did as a kid. All classics. I’d shelve Dinotopia and the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, with this group of classic children’s stories too. Normally I’m a sampler. I haven’t seen any of the movies from the following series, but I did read the first books, Twilight, Outlander, Fifty Shades of Grey, Divergent, etc. I sample a lot of first books, but I don’t read many complete series. The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, and The Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series by George Martin are a couple of exceptions. Other sci-fi and fantasy authors I like include Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jack Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Earnest Cline, Abe Evergreen, Robert A. Heinlein, Hugh Howey, Larry Niven, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, and Andy Weir.

The booklet I've read, 9780749854546, contained actually two stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is this Kindle book and Through the Looking-Glass, which can be found here . In the first story, we get all the anecdotes I remembered from watching the Japanese anime adaptation in my youth. Thus we have here the White Rabbit who is always too late, the "Eat me", "Drink me" episode, the Caterpillar smoking a hookah, the disappearing Cheshire Cat, the tea time with the Hatter (he's indeed never referred as Mad Hatter, even though its stated that he is mad) and the March Hare and the playing croquet with the Queen of Hearts and her court, who were all cards. Plus, we have here some other stories that I didn't know. I plan to go back to the animation and watch the whole lot. I'm curious in how much they stayed true to the whole story. And the longer I was reading, the more I was wondering what I was actually reading, until in the end it is revealed to be all just in Alice's dream. . In Through the Looking Glass then, we then have Alice again dreaming. This time, she is a pawn in a giant chess game, even though the rules are somewhat strange. She tries to reach the end of the chess board to become queen, and on her way there, she meets all sorts of strange creatures, such as Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Humpty Dumpty. In the end, Alice arrives at the end, becomes queen, has a feast with the Red Queen and the White Queen and... awakes. And again, I was wondering what I was actually reading. In the end, it was good to have actually read these two stories to understand where a lot of references and material for movies are coming from. But did I enjoy reading them? Not really. I actually had to force myself to finish reading them. Maybe I was just being already too old to enjoy these stories?

I grew up watching the animated Alice in Wonderland movie, but i hadn't read the book until now. Crazy story

A bit too verbose and yet so much said about so little. Can’t tell if it’s because of Alice’s age or the era of writing.

I read this to my grandson, and he loved it. So, I recommend it for most children, probably over age three.

Top. merci beaucoup.

and the illustrations are divine.

e' il testo che mi aspettavo, ho fatto felice mio figlio che è piuù teclogocico di me e predilige i testi in formato Kindle

Excelente libro, una pieza increíble de colección.

This is a beautifully made book worth a little extra. The format is larger, beautifully typeset with larger, original illustrations- all perfectly suiting Alice's Adventures. I only wish I had bought a hardback version(if there is one)