Alice in Wonderland was my favorite book as a child. My father read it to me, and later I read it again and again on my own. The wildness of characters like the Cheshire Cat and the Mock Turtle, the witty word play, the complete and utterly fantastic nature of Wonderland drew me in time and again. Tenniel's illustrations had much to do with my adoration; his Alice was my Alice and I couldn't imagine the characters any other way.

My first exposure to other artists' illustrations of Alice in Wonderland was at the British Library in London, where I saw Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for the story, Alice's Adventures Underground. He did his own illustrations, and they were nothing like Tenniel's. Carroll's Alice was a dark haired pre-Raphaelite, a direct contrast to Tenniel's little blond in a pinafore. During my NEH seminar at Princeton in 1990, I did research on the illustrators of Alice in Wonderland. To my delight, I found a myriad of wonderful illustrators of the book. It turned out that illustrating Alice in Wonderland was the pinnacle of many an artist's career. Many well-known illustrators have attempted Carroll's book; it seems to be like Hamlet is for actors -- all the greats attempt it. Studying the many different ways illustrators have approached Alice in Wonderland makes for a fascinating literature unit.
 

VISUALIZING ALICE

Despite constant references to Alice in Wonderland few people today seem to have any direct experience with the book. Like my students, they often only know it from the Disney movie.  Or vaguely as a book that may well be too sophisticated for children today.  It is easy to forget when there are political pundits make mention of  Tweedledum-Tweedledee Democrats (to give one recent example during the 2000 Presidential campaign) that this is a story told to a real little girl and emphatically written by its creator for children.  Lewis Carroll was tired of the rather stern children’s books available in Victorian England and wanted to write something different; a book with a cranky, imperfect heroine, without a moral, but with wit and humor.  Certainly, today Wonderland can seem like a very strange place, appropriate because Carroll meant it to be a dream with all the weirdness that entails.  Yet peculiar as the inhabitants of Wonderland may be, none are truly frightening.  Indeed, none of them can compare to the truly terrifying Voldemort of the Harry Potter books to which Alice in Wonderland is often compared.  The most threatening character in Wonderland is the execution-happy Queen of Hearts and Alice, most sensibly, has figured that she is mostly bluster and not someone to worry about.  In fact, one of the amusing aspects of the book is the way Alice, a little girl, often appears larger and more fearful to the characters than they are to her.  With the enthusiasm for fantasy literature at a high due to the enormous popularity of the Harry Potter books, earlier fantasy books like Alice in Wonderland are being reintroduced to children today.
 

LEWIS CARROLL

Lewis Carroll was a rather eccentric Englishman, a mathematics instructor and clergyman at Christ Church College in Oxford. He was born in 1832 as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the eldest of eleven children. Even as a child his talent was evident as he clearly enjoyed entertaining his younger siblings with stories and games. As an adult he became an amateur photographer as well as a writer of mathematical books. A shy man due to a stammer, he never married although he developed close attachments to a number of young girls over the years. While this may give us pause today, his affections were not untypical for Victorians. There is not a shred of evidence that his interactions with children were anything but completely appropriate.

While Carroll had many child friends in the course of his life, one of his favorites was certainly Alice Liddell, the little girl to whom he first told the Alice stories. He first told the story on a lazy rowboat outing on a warm summer afternoon. Eventually he wrote the story down and showed it to some friends who encouraged him to publish it. He did so, and the book was a raging success. It prompted him to do a nursery version, to oversee theatrical versions, to produce toys related to the book (Disney did not invent the tie-in), and finally to write a sequel, Alice Through the Looking-glass.

Carroll wrote several other children's books; however, none was as successful as the two Alice books. He died in 1898.
 

THE ALICE CENTER

Before beginning this unit I set up an Alice enter in my classroom. It consists of many different illustrated editions of Alice in Wonderland as well as other material related to the story, the author, and the period. I constantly come across cartoons, headlines, and ads that refer to Alice. I keep these and display them in the Center. As we get more and more involved in the unit, my students bring in their own books to add to the Center.
 

MEMORIES OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND

I begin, as always, with memories. I tell my students my experiences with the story and they tell me theirs. Rarely do I find that they have had direct exposure to the book. More commonly, they have seen the Disney film or an adapted stage version. Sometimes they have performed in it themselves.
 

READING ALOUD ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Alice in Wonderland is best read aloud by an adult. Much of the book is dialogue which will be much more enjoyable for your students if you read it. The vocabulary is difficult and there are many Briticisms in the book. Reading it to your class means that they can focus on the content of the book rather than the mechanics of decoding. I encourage my students to follow along as I read, but whether or not you wish to do so depends on your particular class. What is most important is that the children get the sense of the humor and the language of the book.

I read from The Annotated Alice with notes by Martin Gardner. Much of the book is better appreciated with some background, and Gardner's notes are very comprehensive. For example, most of the poems are parodies of serious poems or songs of Carroll's day. Children in those days were expected to stand before adults and recite poems. Most of these poems taught lessons of good virtue. Thus, "How doth the little crocodile" plays wickedly with the most earnest poem "How doth the little busy bee." Reading a few stanzas of the original poem helps my students appreciate Carroll's humor. I point out some of the mathematical puzzles if the children seem agreeable. I am careful with these interruptions. Too many, and my students will lose interest in the story.
 

STUDYING THE ILLUSTRATIONS

I provide my students with many different illustrated editions of Alice. In addition to interruptions for context information, we also stop to study the different illustrators. The children become adept at noting the different approaches to illustrations very quickly. For example, Alice is represented in many different ways. Some illustrators keep to an Alice similar to Tenniel's. Others make Alice look more like photographs of the real Alice Liddell. Some doting fathers, like Barry Moser and Michael Hague, use their own daughters as Alice models. Also it is interesting to see what is actually illustrated. Since everything is so wild in Wonderland, some illustrators avoid certain scenes. Disney cut the Pig Baby out of his movie completely and his and others avoid the Duchess's kitchen, perhaps because beating a baby no longer seems particularly humorous. A number of illustrators have commented on contemporary issues within their drawings. Tenniel was a political cartoonist, and there is much speculation that certain characters are prominent politicians of his day. Ralph Steadman makes the playing cards into union cards, and Barry Moser has a March Hare that looks remarkably like Ringo Starr.
 

RESPONDING TO THE BOOK

I set aside a special Alice time every day for the class. The books are from my own collection, and students are thrilled that I am allowing them to handle them. They have always taken very good care of my books. As we read we also discuss the book. Usually we review the previous day's reading before going on.

In any class, some children are more verbal than others. I ask my students to respond to the book in their journals as well as during class discussions. The journal responses often reveal that children who did not appear to be interested were actually quite engaged by the book.
 

DISNEY'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Last year, for the first time, I decided to show the Disney film. It came up more often then usual in our discussions and I got a copy on sale.

The children were struck by how much of Through the Looking-glass was in the film. They also noted the great difference in the ending. In the book, Wonderland is clearly a dream while Disney's version has Alice running away from the court scene at the end. Disney's Wonderland is no dream.
 

ALICE PROJECT

Every year the culminating project for this unit has been for the students to do their own Alice illustrations.  I spent a lot of time talking about the differently media and ways to approach the project.  While most children chose to do a series of illustrations there have been others who preferred to create one large poster full of scenes from the book.  Those who feel they can’t draw have used collage and computer art programs with great success.  One year two of my students created Wonderland stuffed animals.  One was a most "cool" caterpillar and the other a delightful Cheshire Cat, with a caption from the story on his stomach.  Some of the most delightful written pieces have placed the Wonderland characters in different contexts.  Thus, one child had Alice falling into a manhole in New York City while another had her falling down an elevator shaft. Two diehard fans had great fun sending Alice to Baseball Land (AKA Yankee Stadium) via the subway ---what else? 
 

THE ALICE IN WONDERLAND TEA PARTY

One year a group of children asked if we could do a Mad Hatter tea party. I thought it was a great idea, a wonderful way to celebrate our time with Alice. On the day of the tea party I transformed the classroom into the Mad Hatter’s garden. I moved all the desks together and covered them with table clothes. The children had provided many tasty tea treats such as scones, biscuits teacakes and more. I provided the tea.  It was a wonderful event. Many of the children dressed up as Wonderland characters.  Over tea they shared their illustrations and then we watch the Disney film, an interesting experience now the children were experts on the book itself.  Now, the Alice Tea Party has become a yearly event, always a bit different, but always great fun!
 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Year after year I have been amazed by my students' responses to the Alice unit.  While I anticipated the enjoyment of my high level readers, it was my weaker readers who most surprised me. These literal thinkers who might have been expected to find the story difficult to follow, were often the most enthusiastic of all.  My reading it aloud and providing context as well as the multiple illustrated versions made it pleasurable for all. Class discussions, written responses, and the children's final illustrations proved that they not only enjoyed the book, but also were often able to interpret it in quite sophisticated ways.  At the end of every year I ask my students what their favorite literature unit was.  The majority always answer, The Many Faces of Alice.