Ok people things are going to start changing around here hopefully for the better. I'm going to start making things slightly more professional. Well I'm going to try anyway because of a couple of reasons. I am going to apply to a magazine called "Romantic Times Book Reviews" and if I can get a job there that would be great but I've also started thinking that maybe I can try to turn my little reviewing hobby into something more permanent. Maybe even turn it into a "pro" blog and get sponsers and start making a little money doing something I love. I know that there are a lot of steps to turning this little hobby into something professional but I'm willing to take it one step at a time. I am going to be joining the BN affiliate program so that there will be quick and easy links to buy the books I review. Also the format is going to change a little bit again hopefully for the better. Obviously this isn't the first of the new reviews but maybe the first will be in a couple of days.
Today I am going to review "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass" written by Lewis Carroll, the version I read was published in 1993 by Wordsworth Editions Limited, with the ISBN 9781853260025 and it's illustrated by John Tenniel. It is told in the third-person limited perspective. It is the story of Alice who finds herself following a white rabbit down a very peculiar rabbit hole. It is one that takes her on quite an adventure or two. First she shrinks to only 10 inches high to try to get through a tiny door and then she grows to over 9 feet high. She cries a river of tears, shrinks back down to 3 inches high this time and finds herself floating through the keyhole of the door. After she washes up on shore with some animals and a few birds they run a Caucus-Race to get dry. This is just the beginning of Alice's many adventures in Wonderland. She travels around meeting interesting characters, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter & March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, a wise talking catepiller and of course the Queen of Hearts. Through it all she continues to grow and shrink until she is quite unsure of exactly what size she should be. When she finally wakes on the river bank where she first left her sister Alice can't figure out if she had dreamnt the whole thing or not.
When we next meet Alice she is playing with the kittens that her cat Dinah had and conversing with herself about what the looking glass world is like. Finally she decides to visit Looking Glass world and explore a little. She ends up playing a very complicated game of chess where she has to make sure not to wake the Red King, watch what she does in the future and sit and talk to Tweedledee and Tweedledum. It's adventure after adventure for Alice usually followed by a lot of poetry or long winded stories. Eventually she gets quite tired of how backwards everything is finds herself right back in her very own living room.
Lewis Carroll has put together a world that is fantastical and slightly crazy but ultimately charming. There is a reason that this is considered a classic of children's literature. Although some of it is surprisingly adult and most of it is very, very strange I think that children will appreciate the characters and most importantly the illustrations. I don't know how many of the rumors are true about the state of Mr. Carroll when he was writing these but it certainly seems as if he was under the influence of a very active imagination. His writing was lyrical and full of imagery that filled the mind with it's own images. He opened up a fantastical world that few children or adults ever visit, a world of magic and mystery and where everyone is just slightly off their rocker. But all of that just makes the stories that much more charming and loveable. These classics are ones that I will be holding on to for years to come and hopefully one day I will get to share them with my children and grandchildren to come.
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