Alice's Adventure In Wonderland (Akasha Classic)

Few journeys are as strange or as exciting as Alice's trip down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Alice, a bored little girl, unexpectedly encounters a terrified - and talking - white rabbit while playing outside. Her curiosity aroused, she decides to follow him. Falling an impossibly long way down a rabbit hole, Alice finds herself in Wonderland. An anarchic tea party that never ends, an enigmatic cat that disappears except for its smile, living playing cards and croquet mallets are just some of the strange things she encounters. Nothing makes sense - but in Wonderland, it's not supposed to. One of the most famous fantasy stories ever written, Alice in Wonderland is set apart by Lewis Carroll's delightfully twisted logic and inimitable way with words. It's a joy to read for adults and children alike.

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