alice in wonderland review

 I picked up an ebook of Alice In Wonderland. It included Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass, and The Hunting of The Snark. I'll review them individually. It's been a fun ride. I don't regret spending money on this. 

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Below I have reviewed my ebook copy of Alice In Wonderland, which includes Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass, and The Hunting of The Snark. I'll review them one at a time for you. These were all read in the span of half a day. Maybe five hours and these were reviewed. It won't take long to pick these up. 

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

You start with a bored little girl, drop into a silly, absurd storyline, and come back to a little girl who's fallen asleep on the grass. My description of witty puns, funny conversations, odd images, and genuinely weird situations won't do it justice. Read it yourself. It isn't something you can easily describe, nor does it make sense. Given that it ends up being a child's dream, that makes sense. If you read it, you know how absurd it gets. It doesn't become disturbing, though, so your child can easily read it, with some help for younger children. 

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I give this four stars. From the puns to the silly characters, to the absurdity of the entire story, I love it. It made me laugh. The book was a joyous experience paired with "Have I eaten drugged food lately?". We have hedgehogs and flamingoes as croquet balls and mallets (understandably trying to flee) , Alice conversing with a bunch of birds, a tea party with people who angered Time and paid the price, and a court with no order whatsoever.  You step into a world of odd creatures and the imagination of a child. Read it sometime. You'll all love it. 

Through The Looking Glass

This story was slightly less whimsical but just as ridiculous. You have some overlapping character profiles in it, too. It is clearly a different story, though. Alice is 7 and 6 months. She's seeing nursery ryhmes come to life in the dream she's having. Once again, she has drifted off to sleep, and this time she's woken by her cats, whom she started the story talking to. She walks into the mirror, goes into a world where everything is done and read backwards, and follows a chess board pattern of squares to become queen. It is disjointed because it is a dream. She blends from location to location as the story goes. It's slightly more coherent than when she was younger, but not by much. 

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I give this one five stars. I can see where Tim Burton got some of his ideas about the Hatter from this. I can also see where he got Alice going through a mirror. It is the first whimsical thing in the story. I love that she's talking to kittens. It brings me joy to see her interact with them. You can see what she's remembering as you see events unfold. The hilarious thing about this one is when everyone she meets insists on reciting poetry or singing her the song of their people - none of which make any sense at all. This one was slightly easier to follow, but not really. Reading the first story primed me for this one. Still, Alice is older, so she's not as imaginative as younger Alice. You get the sense she's growing up. 

The Hunting of The Snark

This is poetry, not a short story, but it tells the story of a bunch of silly sailors hunting a snark. It's ridiculous and adorable at the same time. If you liked the silly poetry in the Alice stories, you'll like this. I imagine a snark is just an imaginary creature. Or not. The poetry is clear as mud on that. The snark is not really the point - the people are the point. They find it. It kills one of them because it was a Boojum. Makes no sense. It wasn't really supposed to, I think. It was just a fun ride. 

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Five stars to the poetry that made me giggle over one line: "They charmed it with smiles and soap". I would read more of his poetry any day of the week. It was clever. It referenced the Bandersnatch and Jubjub bird. It made me smile. There was also a beaver making lace. Who doesn't like a beaver making lace? 

Ending Thoughts

When reading this stuff, don't expect much to make sense. Poetry galore fills the pages and Alice just rolls with the weird, obtuse, absurd world she's fallen asleep into. You can tell she grew up in the second one. The bonus poetry is worth checking out. My ebook included it with the Alice stories. My version came from Kobo and I'd suggest getting the version with this poetry included. I even got personal letters from Lewis Caroll in between. It was one dollar and six cents on Kobo. 

A note, there is one lost chapter that has been found for Through The Looking Glass and you can find the original shorter manuscript Alice's Adventures Underground (the pre-published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). You'll find the whole package of that in Kobo, too, as well as some that have the children's condensed version for younger kids (Alice Nursery). Whatever you want to read of all that, you can find on Kobo and probably anywhere else. I didn't need all of it. You can feel free to indulge yourself because it is less than five dollars on Kobo to get all of it. 

Also, it's short. I read it in half a day and I wasn't even home all day. You can easily swing this if you're an avid reader or you have time to kill before the kids get home. You could read this to your kids. It's nonsense poetry and silly characters. I call it safe to read at an age. The only caution is big words. That's why Alice Nursery exists. 

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Jack Thomas is running from a past case. He's hiding in Wrenville. Is his past case catching up with him? 

Find out in my first book, Wrenville, a stand-alone suspense novel.