Alice in Wonderland (Pocket Classics)

A beautiful hardback for the price of a paperback. White's Pocket Classics offer the best-loved classics in an irresistible small hardback with original illustrations embossed on the covers and all the features of a fine edition -- coloured endpapers, marker ribbon, illustrated title pages and new typesetting -- combining the best contemporary design with the luxury of a hardback and introductions by today's popular authors, to make the most appealing classics available at a paperback price and a perfect gift. This edition of Alice in Wondrland includes both Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and has original interior illustrations.

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