Alice in Wonderland B1

Name: Monica Kimber
Class period: B1
Book Title: Alice in Wonderland
Author: Lewis Carroll
Pages: 238
Rating: ***

Recommendation: This is a great book for everyone! It is quite funny and makes your mind stretch wide open to try and imagine all the great and wonderful things that go on in this book. It really is a whole different world in there.

Summary: This story is about a young girl named Alice. She is bored of school work and her life. She suddenly finds herself falling for a very long time and eventually figures out that she is in a rabbit’s hole. She eats some mysterious food she finds and she grows until her head hits the ceiling. She then meets a rabbit. When the rabbit leaves, Alice becomes lonely again and starts crying. She cries enough tears to create a pool. She eats some additional food that causes her to shrink to the point that she almost drowns in her own pool of tears. From here on out she grows and shrinks several more times, meeting many new creatures along the way. Every card, Gryphon and Mock Turtle she meets seems to just seem to love talking at her which frustrates Alice. She wonders if she is going crazy and if she will ever get home. Eventually, Alice does escape from her fantasy land only to find out that… if you want to know the ending, you will have to read the book!

Explanation of the rating: This is a good book, but since it is not specifically written for teenagers it lacks a few things. Like action. I like how in the end Alice realized that her real life was not as bad as it had seemed and that it was worth living in the real world. Carroll’s writing skills caused the images of Alice’s experiences to play in your mind. Each new character was random and creates a complexity in the story line that is riveting. However, as random as the characters seem, they all tie nicely together at the end of the book. Similar to Wizard of Oz. If you like fantasy adventure books, I would highly recommend Alice in Wonderland!

Favorite Passage: “Just as she was trying to decide (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy) whether or not to get up and pick some daisies to make a daisy chain, a White Rabbit with pick eyes dashed by. There was nothing so remarkable in that. Nor did Alice think it so very unusual to hear the rabbit say to himself, ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall be late for a very important date!’” Alice in Wonderland, p. 8

This famous line typifies the skillful writing and imagination of Carroll in this work. He comes up with whimsical and irrational events that he skillfully weaves together to make a seemingly lucid story.