Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll
illustrated by John Tenniel
1964 (Platt & Monk)
- The Lewis Carroll Society Website
~~~~~
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
illustrated by Abelardo Morell
1998
This may be my new favorite edition of this book! The illustrations and the layout are simply wonderful. I am just so impressed with this book!
I love the “Alice” books by Lewis Carroll. I love the clever word play throughout as well as the wonderful imagery. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has some of the best nonsense poems in it as well as some fascinating philosophical questions. The Cheshire Cat’s statement about everyone being mad is an interesting statement. Is everyone really mad or is it just perception? Alice provides an interesting view into this world where everything is topsy-turvy. I just find the set up and the craziness very interesting.
The illustrations and layout of this book are so perfect for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that it’s incredible. One of my favorite things was that each chapter started in very large print and slowly shrunk so that by the end of the chapter’s first page the text is down to the size it is on every other page. This is a great design choice because of the constant size shifts throughout the entire book. Alice never really knows from one minute to the next what size she is going to be and the size change in the text really reflects those changes.
The illustrations themselves are very interesting. The photographer, Mr. Morell, cut out and sometimes enlarged the classic illustrations for this book by Tenniel. Then he set them up in small scenes using books, props, plants and various other things and photographed the result. The pictures he created are so wonderful! They use books in particular in a wonderful way. The rabbit hole is a hole through a book, the tea table (where the interesting and funny word play conversations take place) is a dictionary, and Alice’s giant hand reaches out of a book for the white rabbit when she has grown to fill his house. The images are simply incredible! I just love the cleverness of the choices. The lighting and placement is always perfect, like in the Cheshire Cat image where the shadow creates a second tree trunk making the image even more confusing and magical than it was originally!
This book is wonderfully put together. I love the images and the book is really one of my favorite stories. I wish I could find Through the Looking Glass done by this illustrator! I highly recommend this book. If you are looking for a really good edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this is the one to get!
- The Lewis Carroll Society Website
- Book Blog Post (First Impressions)
- Book Blog Post (Changing Sizes)
- Book Blog Post (Word Play)
- Book Blog Post (Final Impressions)
~~~~~
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
illustrated Michael Foreman
2004
I really like this book a lot. Every tome I read it I find more fun details and images in it. The illustrations in this edition, however, did very little to bring out those clever details that Carroll so specifically included. The world of Wonderland is very proper within this book. The chairs at the Mad Hatter’s table all match (which the text says they do not) and other such mistakes. In fact, there are a great number of detail mistakes in this book, some of them not so trivial. The one that irritated me the most was that the gardeners who were painting the roses red were hearts when they are supposed to be spades (I happen to really like that detail, so it bugs me). The mistakes are distracting and any kid will pick them out immediately, which isn’t a good thing!
This edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is illustrated by Foreman in watercolors. Supposedly the artist was trying to mimic Carroll’s photography, but other than Alice’s hair and dress there is very little evidence of that. Getting beyond nit picky details (which I admit, I tend to get hung up on sometimes), the illustrations still seem to lack the originality and magic necessary for the story. The author specifically draws the real world in sepia tones while Wonderland is in colour, but rather than adding anything to this story the technique just feels copied and overdone since it is a very common motif.
Mr. Foreman states in the back of the book that every illustrator must undertake Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at some point in their career. This makes me wonder if he really loved the book and thus wanted to illustrate it or if he felt like he should because it was expected. I don’t know. That might explain the lack of magic, though.
I don’t really recommend this book. I would do in a pinch, but there are many editions that are much better with far more wonderful illustrations (even Tenniel’s original drawings are better). Thus, I don’t recommend this book. If you need an edition of Alice, find a better one!
- Publisher’s Description
- The Lewis Carroll Society Website
- Book Blog Post (First Impressions)
- Book Blog Post (Illustrations)
- Book Blog Post (More Illustrations)
- Book Blog Post (Final Impressions)
