After the Sun Sets by Miriam Blanton Huber, Frank Seely Salisbury, and Mabel O’Donnell; illustrated by Nellie H. Farnam and Mary Royt; 1938, 1953, 1962.
This was my favorite book of fairy tales when I was a kid! I gave away my copy years ago and regretted it, but I was thrilled to find another copy later at an antique/vintage mall.
The collection includes some popular fairy tales that you can find in other fairy tale collections, like Cinderella, Brier Rose (the Sleeping Beauty story), and Hansel and Gretel. It also has some stories that are less commonly known these days, like Aiken-Drum, the Brownie and Prince Hal and the Giant. When I was young, my favorite stories in the book, the ones I read over and over, were Snow-White and Rose-Red, The Princess on the Glass Hill, and East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
One of the things that makes this collection unique is that it includes a section of poems at the back of the book. I love the one called Cinderella’s Song, and it was one of the reasons why I missed this collection so badly. I don’t think I’ve seen that poem in any other book.
The illustrations in the book are beautiful! I loved them as a child, and I still find them enchanting as an adult. Some are in black-and-white, but some are in full color.
I didn’t realize it when I was a kid, but this book is actually the third book in a series, The Wonder-Story Books, and it was a unit in The Row, Peterson Basic Reading Program. I have the 1962 edition, but the book is actually older than that. Its copyright was renewed multiple times.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. There is also an earlier edition of this book available through Internet Archive, and it doesn’t have the section of poetry included, so the poetry might only appear in the 1962 edition.
Stories:
Aiken-Drum, the Brownie
Aiken Drum is a Brownie, a magical little man who likes to do chores for other people for little reward. Reward a Brownie too much, and he will leave.
Pat and the Fairies
Pat joins the fairies in a dance, and they loan him a pair of shoes when his wear out. When he later comes to return the shoes, he gets a wonderful reward. A greedy shoemaker tries to join the fairies in their dance and borrow a pair of shoes to get the same reward, but the fairies punish him when he tries to cheat them.
Change About
A husband grumbles about how little his wife accomplishes in the course of a day while she minds the house and their child and he works out in the fields. The husband and wife decide to switch places for a day to prove which of them works harder, and the husband has a surprise about what really happens at home while he’s away.
Cinderella
A girl who is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters receives magical gifts from her fairy godmother so she is able to attend the prince’s ball.
Snow-White and Rose-Red
A widow and her two daughters let a gentle talking bear spend the winter with them so he won’t freeze, but this bear is under a spell.
Snip, The Tailor
A tailor sets out to make his fortune. He uses his wits to defeat a pair of giants and win a castle and half the kingdom from the king.
Brier Rose
This is the Sleeping Beauty story. A young princess is cursed by a bad fairy. When she hurts her hand on a spindle, she and everyone in her castle falls asleep for a hundred years.
Prince Hal and the Giant
Prince Hal is the youngest of a king’s seven sons. The other six have left home to find brides and have never returned home. No one knows what happened to them. Prince Hal sets out to find what happened to his brothers. He finds out that they and their brides have been turned into stone statues in the house of a giant. Prince Hal must find a way to save them and the princess who has become the giant’s latest captive.
Hansel and Gretel
A pair of children are abandoned in the woods, and they find a strange house made of gingerbread. They are almost eaten by the witch who lives in the house.
The Princess on the Glass Hill
Every year on Midsummer Night, the hay disappears from a farmer’s field. Each of his sons tries to find out why, but each of them is frightened by the strange things that happen, until the youngest son faces the phenomenon and discovers a strange horse with a coat of mail that fits him perfectly. The same thing happens twice more so that the youngest son acquires three fine horses and three sets of mail. He keeps them secret at first, but later, he uses them to perform an amazing feat and ride to the top of a glass hill to win the hand of a princess.
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
A white bear comes to a family with many children and says that he will make them rich if the eldest daughter, Freda, will come with him. At first, she doesn’t want to go, but when she does, he takes her to a magical castle. Unfortunately, she disobeys the bear’s instructions while she’s there. He is under a witch’s spell, and Freda must find a way to undo the damage she’s caused and break his spell, following him to the witch’s castle by riding the winds, east of the sun and west of the moon.
Stories in Poetry:
I Keep Three Wishes Ready by Annette Wynne – It’s good to know what you want to wish for, just in case you get the chance.
At the Zoo by A. A. Milne – There are many fascinating things to see in a zoo!
Some One by Walter de la Mare – Someone knocked at the door. Who?
Little Nut Tree by Mother Goose – A traditional rhyme about a magical tree. One of my favorites!
The Duel by Eugene Field – The gingham dog and the calico cat have a fight.
Queen Mab by Thomas Hood – About the fairy queen and how she gives pleasant dreams to children.
Cinderella’s Song by Elizabeth Madox Roberts – Cinderella confides her secret to her cat.
Trees by Harry Behn – Trees are wonderful things!
The Story of the Baby Squirrel by Dorothy Aldis – A child finds a baby squirrel and raises it. When it grows up, it runs away, but they think he’s probably still living with the other squirrels nearby. They sometimes see a squirrel who seems to be saying hello to them.
The Hens by Elizabeth Madox Roberts – It sounds like the hens are talking, but what are they saying?
Roads by Rachel Field – Roads might lead anywhere and to all sorts of wonderful things!
Washington by Nancy Byrd Turner – About George Washington. This one seems like an odd inclusion to me, adding a poem about a historical figure to a collection that has more fairy tale themes.
Easter Stories for Children edited by Van B. Hooper, 1962.
This book was published by Ideals, and if I remember right, is part of a series of holiday/seasonal books for children. (I don’t have a list of other books in the series, though.) It has short stories and poems about Easter. Largely, they’re not very religious in tone, tending to focus on fairies and the Easter bunny. I actually found all the references to fairies confusing because I never heard anybody talk about fairies being associated with Easter when I was a kid. On the religious side, there is one poem about prayer and a story about how the dogwood plant represents the crucifixion. There is also some information about how Easter is celebrated around the world.
The pictures are in sepia tones. Mostly, they’re drawings, but there are also some photographs of cute bunnies and kittens wearing human clothes. The only full color pictures are on the inside of the front and back covers, and they’re scenes of rabbits painting Easter eggs. All in all, it’s a very cute book for Easter.
Stories:
How the Forest Fairies Get Ready for Spring – “Written especially for you by SPARKIE” – All of the forest fairies have special tasks for getting ready for spring.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (1886-1943) – A classic children’s story about a bunny who disobeys his mother.
Just After Easter by Maryjane McCarthy – Mr. Bunny Rabbit is worried about next Easter because the farmer is having trouble affording grain to feed his chickens. If he can’t keep the chickens, where will they get their Easter eggs? This is the story that has pictures of bunnies and kittens in costumes with props. The kittens try various ways to raise money for the chickens.
The Legend of the Dogwood – author unknown – The legend is that the cross of Jesus’s Crucifixion was made from dogwood, but the plant felt badly about it, so Jesus made the plant too small to be used for such a purpose again and gave it a cross-shaped flower.
Easter in Many Lands – About Easter customs in different countries, and the origins of the word “Easter” and how symbols like bunnies and eggs came to be associated with Easter. This is my favorite section in the book!
The Story of the Colored Easter Egg by “Maryjane” – A fairytale about a kind queen and the origins of Easter eggs.
Poems:
The Magic Pool by Dorothy Weiner – Bunnies color eggs in a magical pond fed by a rainbow.
Easter Bunny’s Secret by Mrs. Roy L. Peifer – The Easter bunny collects drops of paint that Jack Frost uses to paint leaves in autumn and saves them for Easter eggs, but when the paint gets spilled, he needs to get colors from other sources.
The Little Spring Spirit by Leonie Miller – The spirit of spring calls to plants and animals with the change of the season.
If Easter Eggs Would Hatch by Douglas Malloch – What would come out of an Easter egg? Brightly-colored chickens or maybe a little silver bunny?
In Cottontail Town by Marguerite Gode – A famly in Cottontail Town takes in an elderly rabbit and nurses him back to health. He starts a school there to teach the other rabbits how to paint Easter eggs.
The Gray Bunny’s Night – “As told by The big black Bumblebee” – A little gray bunny wants to be brightly colored for Easter, and his wish is granted by the queen of the fairies.
Hippety-Hop to the Barbershop by Claribel Ream – The Easter Bunny is going to the barbershop to deliver eggs and candy for the barber’s children.
Helping One Another by Mrs. Roy L. Peifer – The Little Red Hen helps the Easter Bunny to fill his basket for Easter.
His Bunny by Marilyn Jean Fais – About a little boy’s stuffed bunny. It can be hard on a toy to be a child’s favorite, worn and dragged everywhere, but it’s worth it!
Prayer by Ethel Romig Fuller – If we can hear songs from radio waves that travel through the air, God can also hear prayers.
Seed Thoughts by W. M. Walker – Good and kind thoughts produce good deeds, like plants sprouting from seeds, but selfish thoughts are like weeds that get in the way. Be careful what seed thoughts you grow in the garden of your mind!
Jack in the Pulpit by Mrs. Jessie S. Manifold – Spring plants and animals celebrate the Sabbath Day.
And He Hippety-Hopped Away by Rowena Bastin Bennett – The Easter Bunny delivers eggs and candy to children before sunrise.
Mother Goose Rhymes, illustrated by Eulalie, 1950-1953.
This was one of my first books of rhymes and poems as a child. We’ve had this book for as long as I can remember. I always loved the illustrations in the book, which are realistic in style, and like the illustrations in old Kate Greenaway books from the late 19th century, showing children in clothes that would be appropriate for the early 19th century, with high waists and short jackets. I suspect that Kate Greenaway’s work may have been some of the inspiration for the illustrations in this book. Some of the illustrations are small ones that appear in corners of the pages, surrounded by the text of the rhymes. Other illustrations take up a full page. All of them are full color illustrations.
People can recite popular nursery rhymes like Mary Had a Little Lamb, Old Mother Hubbard, Little Bo-Peep, and Lucy Locket from memory because many of us heard and memorized them early in life. But, since we’re on the subject, who is/was Mother Goose and what are these rhymes about really?
Mother Goose rhyme books don’t really have an author because the rhymes are short little folk poems with no known original author. When an “author” is credited for a collection, they are credited as being “collectors” of the rhymes included, not as the original creators of those rhymes. The first person to collect and describe folk and fairy tales as being “Mother Goose” stories was the French author and folk tale collector Charles Perrault. In 1697, he published a collection of stories called Stories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals or Mother Goose Tales. It isn’t completely clear how many of the stories in this book were completely Perrault’s own creation, based on common themes often found in folk and fairy tales, and how many were stories he collected from other sources and modified to fit his style and purpose. The stories included in this original Mother Goose book included many fairy tales that are now childhood classics, like Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, and the scary Bluebeard. This collection of stories was not meant for children. The stories were intended for adults because fairy tales were in fashion among the aristocratic literary circles in Paris at the time the book was published. The exact reasons why Perrault decided to use the imaginary “Mother Goose” as the supposed source of these stories or even who “Mother Goose” once was are uncertain. American legend sometimes cites “Mother Goose” as being the wife of Isaac Goose and the mother Elizabeth Goose, who lived in Boston in the 17th century and told stories and sang songs to her (a story referenced in The Only True Mother Goose Melodies published in Boston in 1833), but it’s unlikely that Perrault was referencing her. A more likely theory is that “Mother Goose” was a reference to a somewhat forgotten figure of French folklore who would have been more familiar to people living in the late 17th century who studied folk and fairy tales. There was a French legend from the Middle Ages about a queen who told stories that amazed children and was sometimes called “goose-footed”, and possibly, this story or a similar figure from French history or legend became known as “Mother Goose.”
In the 18th century, Perrault’s book was translated into English, and English authors began putting together their own “Mother Goose” books that included English nursery rhymes. The book that shifted the association of “Mother Goose” from stories to rhymes was Mother Goose’s Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle, a collection of English nursery rhymes published by John Newbery, a famous English publisher of children’s literature in the 18th century who was nicknamed “The Father of Children’s Literature” and who would later become the namesake of the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children’s literature. Mother Goose’s Melody popularized the association of “Mother Goose” with children’s nursery rhymes in both England and America, and ever since, it has been used in the title of collections of nursery rhymes. Many of the popular Mother Goose rhymes are centuries-old ones from England, although some later classics, like Mary Had a Little Lamb, were added to American books of nursery rhymes in the 19th century.
But, what do these rhymes mean, or do they mean anything? Are they just nonsense rhymes for children about things like a cow jumping over the moon or a boy and girl falling down the hill, or is there some additional meaning behind these rhymes that have kept them in the public consciousness for so many centuries? The exact origins as well as the original authors of many old nursery rhymes have been lost to time, but there are indications that various nursery rhymes may have begun as folk songs or rhymes referencing current events that were happening at the time they were originally composed. Although they sound like harmless and innocent nonsense, people who heard them at the time when they were first composed would have recognized references or pieces of dark humor about real events or scandals that were public knowledge. In modern times, there is some debate about the exact meaning behind some of these rhymes because, while the references in the rhymes may have seemed clever and humorous to people at the time of their creation, they are too esoteric for modern people, who are centuries removed from the events they were referencing. For generations, people passed on the rhymes to their children but not the explanations of their meaning, so most were simply forgotten. However, there are articles that you can about The history lessons that may be hidden in nursery rhymes and The Dark Side of Nursery Rhymes, which discuss what we know about the creation of these nursery rhymes and theories about their original meanings. Sometimes, there are multiple theories about certain rhymes because there just isn’t enough evidence to firmly settle on one, and also, it’s possible that rhymes could be inspired and shaped by more than one event or source.
This particular book of Mother Goose Rhymes is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. However, there are also many other books of Mother Goose rhymes available through Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, including Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose.
A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by T. Lewis and Sara Gutierrez, 1989.
This is a reprinting of the classic collection of children’s poems by Robert Louis Stevenson first published in 1885 as Penny Whistles. What makes this edition of the book different from other printings is the illustrations, which are an unusual combination of watercolors and embroidered borders. Mary Pope Osborne, author of the Magic Tree House series wrote an introduction to the book about the life of Robert Louis Stevenson and his youth in Scotland in the 1850s, which inspired his poems for children. (See my list of Books from 1850s for the types of books children were reading during this time period, but remember that they also would have read books that were published in previous decades.)
The poems have gentle themes from the lives and fantasies of children, like games of pretend, bedtimes, and the little things that children notice and that adults often take for granted, like shadows and the beauty of stars. Some of them have things that are now anachronistic, like lamplighters, but they’re still imaginative and enjoyable for all ages.
I’ve always liked Robert Louis Stevenson’s children’s poems, and this book has my favorites! My personal favorites are:
To Any Reader – Robert Louis Stevenson speaks to children reading these poems about the child he used to be and how the poems are like a window on his childhood, although his own youth is long gone. Escape at Bedtime – About a child who sneaks out of bed at night to look at the stars. The Swing – I mentioned this one before because it’s included in another collection of poems, and I’ve often thought of it when I’ve been on swings. Picture Books in Winter – A child enjoys picture books indoors when it’s cold outside. The Land of Storybooks – About the adventures that children who love books enjoy in their imaginations.
However, my mother’s favorite children’s poem is Bed in Summer because it reminds her of her own childhood and having to go to bed while the sun was still shining in summer and other children in the neighborhood were still playing outside. (I didn’t have this experience when I was growing up because I never lived in a place that had daylight savings time, which changes the clocks by one hour, providing an extra hour of daylight before sunset. Arizona is very hot, so there’s a benefit for doing things after the sun has set, and few people have any interest in pushing back time to maximize the scorchingly hot daylight hours. My childhood memories include going to parks with my parents after the sun set and being put to bed after we got home.)
There are many copies of this book available in various printings online both at Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg because the text of the original book is now public domain. I didn’t see this particular printing with these illustrations available online, but if you just want to read the poems, there are plenty of other copies of the book to choose from!
A Child’s First Book of Poems with pictures by Cyndy Szekeres, 1981.
I think this actually might have been my first book of poetry. At least, I’ve had it since I was a fairly young child, and I can’t remember reading any other book of poetry before this one. If I had an earlier book of poetry, it was probably a book of Mother Goose rhymes.
The poems in the book are about a variety of topics and some of them are by famous people and were popular poems for decades before this book was published. Among the authors whose poems appear in this book are Emily Dickinson, A.A. Milne, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Among my favorite poems in the book:
Wild Beasts by Evaleen Stein – About children pretending to be animals. Choosing by Eleanor Farjeon – About choosing between various nice things. Hiding by Dorothy Aldis – A child hides while his parents search for him. My mother often quoted from this poem when we were kids and she was looking for one of us. “I’m hiding, I’m hiding, and no one knows where …” The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson – I think of this poem whenever I’m on a swing. Bedtime by Eleanor Farjeon – Children making excuses to stay up later.
The pictures really make this book special. They are all drawn in a realistic style. Some just show ordinary children and animals, but some contain whimsical elements, like animals wearing clothes, depending on the poem.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Dragons, Dragons, and Other Creatures that Never Were by Eric Carle, 1991.
This is a collection of poems and quotations about various mythical creatures from around the world. The poems and quotes come from various sources. Some are by famous authors and some are nursery rhymes and pieces of folklore. The quote about the leviathan is from The Book of Job.
The illustrations are what really make the book interesting. They are bright and colorful, and the middle section of the book folds out to reveal a particularly long picture of a Chinese dragon.
Although there are common mythological creatures, like dragons, unicorns, yetis, the phoenix, there are also less common ones that some children may not have even heard of, like the giant bird called the roc, the two-headed amphisbaena, the kappa, and the bunyip.
Most of the descriptions of the creatures are in the poems themselves and in the accompanying pictures, but there is a glossary in the back that explains more about what each creature is and where it is from.
The book is available to borrow and read online for free through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
The story of Alice in Wonderland is over 150 years old, and the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, is now 150 years old, as of 2021. These books have been reprinted in many different languages and editions. The edition that I’m using for this review is actually a combined edition of the two from 1960 with added notes by Martin Gardner. (Although I used a cover image from a different edition above.) I like editions with added notes because there is quite a lot to explain about both Lewis Carroll and his stories.
I explained a lot of Lewis Carroll’s background and some of the controversies surrounding his life in my review of Alice in Wonderland. One important point about the Alice stories is that they are full of puzzles, riddles, word games, in-jokes, and parodies of poems that were popular in the author’s time. Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) was a mathematician and scholar at Oxford, and he liked to play with logic puzzles and word games. Sometimes he would hide people’s names within poems or parts of the story by rearranging the letters of their names or using them as the beginning of lines in a poem, as an acrostic. There is an acrostic poem which is dedicated to Alice Liddell, the real girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland. This poem is printed as part of some editions of Through the Looking Glass, including the one that I’m using. The acrostic poem also references Row, Row, Row Your Boat, which is apparently older although its origins aren’t completely certain. If you read down the beginning letters of the poem, you find out that Alice’s middle name was Pleasance.
The chess game in Through the Looking Glass is meant to be part of an actual chess game with real moves that can be mapped out on a board. The game and the moves in the story are explained in the preface of my copy of the book. Alice begins as a white pawn in the game, but when she reaches the other side of the board, she becomes a queen, which is part of the rules of chess – pawns that successfully reach the opponent’s side may be exchanged for other pieces. The colors of the chess pieces in Alice’s game are red and white instead of black and white because red and white are old traditional colors. Although black and white are common today, many different color combinations have been used, and the red and white combination dates back to the Middle Ages.
The story begins on the day before Guy Fawkes’ Night. (Alice has been watching the bonfire preparations out the window.) Alice is trying to wind some yarn, and her pet cat Dinah’s little black kitten keeps playing with it. Alice chastises the kitten, and then begins talking to the kitten about the way it was watching her play chess earlier in the day. Alice likes to play games of pretend, and she starts to pretend that the kitten is the red queen from the chess game. The kitten doesn’t cooperate in posing like the chess queen, so Alice holds it up to a looking-glass.
As they look in the mirror, Alice gets the idea of a “Looking-glass House” – a house on the other side of the mirror that can be reached by stepping through it. Alice starts to imagine what it would be like to enter the world on the other side of the mirror. She gets up on the mantle over the fireplace and steps through the mirror into the looking-glass house to see what is there.
Things in the looking-glass house are very strange. The clock and the pictures seem to be alive, and so are the chess pieces. Alice helps the pieces back onto their table after they’ve been knocked off, but they don’t seem to understand what has happened and are alarmed. Alice then picks up a book on the table near the chess board and reads the poem Jabberwocky, which is about the defeat of a horrible monster. The poem is written in backwards writing, and Alice has to hold it up to a mirror to read it. The poem is a nonsense poem that contains many made-up words, which are explained later on in the story.
Alice decides to see what is outside the house. She discovers that the flowers can talk to her, but they are rude and insulting. Then, Alice encounters the Red Queen, who has grown taller than she was in the house. (The flowers say that it’s because of all the fresh air outside.) The Red Queen is both commanding and contradictory, but she gives Alice directions to other “squares”, addressing her as a chess pawn.
Pawns get to move two squares on their first turn, so Alice gets to go by train. In the train carriage, Alice meets many strange characters, including a gentleman dressed in white, a Goat, a Beetle, and a Gnat, who keeps whispering in her ear and suggesting that she make jokes based on puns. Through the Gnat, Alice meets other strange insects, like the snap-dragon-fly, the rocking-horse-fly, and the bread-and-butterfly. The Gnat tells Alice that the creatures in the woods don’t have names, and when Alice goes through the woods, she temporarily forgets her name, getting it back again on the other side.
Soon after, Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee. (Lewis Carroll didn’t invent these characters. They are nursery rhyme characters.) They ask Alice if she likes poetry, and they tell her the tale of The Walrus and the Carpenter. (This is one of the most-quoted poems in the Alice stories – many people remember the part where they “talk of many things” – “Shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.”) At the end, Alice can’t decide which of the two characters she likes the best because both are sneaky and eat the oysters that trusted them, so she decides that she doesn’t like either of them. (Yeah, I can think of others stories where I’ve felt the same way.) Alice hears a strange sound, and they tell her that it’s the Red King snoring and that the Red King is actually dreaming about her right now. Tweedledum and Tweedledee insist that Alice isn’t a real person, only part of the Red King’s dream, and that she’d disappear if he were to wake up, which upsets Alice. Alice starts to cry, which she thinks is proof that she’s real, but they claim that those aren’t real tears. Finally, Alice decides that they’re just talking nonsense and that there’s no point in crying over it. Tweedledum and Tweedledee want to have a battle (as in their poem), but a large crow interrupts them and frightens them away by producing a great wind.
Alice catches hold of a shawl that was being blown away by the wind and returns it to its owner, the White Queen. The White Queen speaks very strangely, and she says that it’s an effect of living backwards. Because she lives backwards, her memory works both ways, and she can remember things that haven’t happened yet. The White Queen screams with pain before she pricks her finger, so she doesn’t have to do it again after her finger is hurt. Alice cries when she talks about how lonely she is in the woods, and the White Queen distracts her by telling her to consider things because no one can think of two things at once (which is true). The White Queen talks about considering and believing impossible things (sometimes she believes “six impossible things before breakfast” – one of the most famous lines that is often quoted from this story).
As Alice asks the White Queen if her finger is better, she suddenly and inexplicably finds herself in a shop and talking to a sheep, who asks her what she wants to buy. Alice tries to look around, and the Sheep asks her if she’s a child or a teetotum (a kind of spinning top used in old games, sometimes by itself and sometimes as a replacement for dice or a spinner – dreidels are a kind of teetotum) because of the way she’s turning around. The Sheep is knitting and keeps picking up more needles to knit with. For awhile, the shop disappears, and Alice finds herself in a boat with the Sheep, but then the shop returns, and the Sheep asks her again what she wants to buy.
Alice decides to buy an egg, and the egg that she buys turns into Humpty Dumpty when she approaches it. Humpty Dumpty is a bit rude and insults Alice’s name because he doesn’t think it means anything. Alice mistakes Humpty Dumpty’s cravat for a belt because he’s egg-shaped and doesn’t have a true neck for wearing a tie. Humpty Dumpty reveals that the cravat was an un-birthday (a concept that Lewis Carroll invented) present from the White King and Queen. All through the conversation, Humpty Dumpty uses words in unusual yet strangely nit-picky ways, making words mean only what he wants them to mean in the moment. Because he’s so particular about the meanings of words, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty about all the strange words in the Jabberwocky poem, and he explains what the made-up words mean. Humpty Dumpty recites another poem for Alice that doesn’t seem to have a true ending and then abruptly dismisses her.
As Alice leaves, she meets the king with all of his horses and men (from the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme) and is introduced to one of his messengers. Alice is amused by the name and description of the messenger and starts playing a game of “I Love My Love” out loud with the messenger’s name. (The two messengers are called Haigha and Hatta and are shown looking like the March Hare and Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland in the illustrations.) The messenger informs the king that the lion and the unicorn are fighting for the crown again (another nursery rhyme reference). The king says that it’s all a joke because the crown is his and neither one of them is going to get it no matter which of them wins the fight.
The unicorn is amazed to meet Alice because he never knew that children were real before. As at the end of the rhyme, they are given plum cake, and they hand the dish to Alice for her to cut the cake. However, Alice finds that she can’t cut it, so they ask her to hand the cake around first and then cut it afterward, which surprisingly works.
After the others are drummed out of town, also as part of the rhyme, the Red Knight attempts to capture Alice, but the White Knight shows up to save her. The White Knight tells Alice all about his inventions, none of which make any sense, and sings her a song which apparently has several names and is set to the tune of a song Alice recognizes as “I give thee all, I can no more” (which is another name and the first line of the song which is really titled My Heart and Lute, which is part of the on-going joke about the song’s real name).
Then, Alice reaches the final square of the board and becomes a queen, finding a crown suddenly on her head. The Red Queen and the White Queen appear suddenly, and the Red Queen tells her that she must pass an examination before she can truly become a queen. The queens ask her a series of questions that are supposed to be math questions but are actually a combination of riddles and nonsense. Their general knowledge questions are a combination of nonsense and puns. Eventually, the Red Queen and White Queen both fall asleep to a parody of “Rock-a-bye Baby.”
Alice finds herself in front of a door labelled “Queen Alice,” but the old frog who comes to the door doesn’t seem to want to let her in. Alice enters anyway and sits next to the Red Queen and White Queen. They introduce her to the food being served at the feast, but they don’t actually allow her to have any because it isn’t polite to cut and serve something you’ve been introduced to, and the plum cake verbally protests when Alice tries to serve it anyway.
The White Queen tells Alice a riddle in poem form about fish. The riddle is never answered, but everyone drinks to Alice’s health. The Red Queen tells Alice that she should make a speech, and as she gets up, many strange things begin happening in the room. Alice thinks that the Red Queen is responsible and grabs hold of her, threatening to “shake her into a kitten.” Alice suddenly wakes up, holding her little black kitten.
Like in Alice in Wonderland, everything that Alice experienced was a dream. However, the end of the book poses the question of whether the dream was Alice’s or the Red King’s. The question is never answered; it’s just something to make the readers think. That’s actually what I like most about the Alice stories, that they are partly meant to make the reader think. The stories are somewhat disjointed and constantly changing, kind of like dreams do, but I appreciate all the references and parodies in the stories.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865.
The beginning of the story is famous. Alice is sitting with her sister (unnamed in the book, but probably based on Lorina because Lorina was older than Alice) by the river, and she is bored by the book that her sister is reading because there are no pictures or conversations. As Alice is sitting there drowsily, she suddenly spots a white rabbit who seems like he’s running late for something. Curious to see where he is going, Alice follows him and falls down a rabbit hole which is like a deep well.
It takes her a long time to fall (causing Alice to wonder if she’ll pop out on the other side of the world eventually), and when she reaches the bottom, she finds herself in a dark hallway with a small door that is too small for her to go through. She manages to shrink herself by drinking from a mysterious bottle that says “Drink Me,” but she forgets the key to the door on the table above her, so she has to make herself bigger by eating cake from a box labeled “Eat Me.” When Alice is big, she cries so much, worrying that she is no longer herself but someone else she would rather not be because so many strange things are happening, that she makes a sea of tears, and when she is small again, she has to swim.
She meets a mouse, who swims to shore with her, where they meet a bunch of other animals (including the Dodo), who all seem somehow familiar to Alice (probably because they’re all parodies of people Dodgson and the Liddells knew – A Lory (type of parrot) argues with Alice and tells her that it’s older than she is and “must know better” than she does – possibly another reference to Alice’s older sister Lorina).
Alice and all of the animals are wet, so they try to dry themselves. The Mouse begins telling a very dry history of England (ha, ha), but that’s not good enough. The Dodo suggests that they have a Caucus-race (Alice’s childish misunderstanding of certain words and concepts leads to some of the jokes and puns in the story) to dry themselves out, and they all start running in a circle. After awhile, they all stop, and since there is no obvious winner, the Dodo decides that everyone has won and that everyone should receive a prize. Alice gives all the animals pieces of candy from her pocket. Alice’s prize is her own thimble, which is the only other thing she has in her pocket.
The Mouse starts to tell a story about why it hates dogs and cats, but it gives up when Alice doesn’t pay attention and becomes confused. Then, Alice makes the mistake of mentioning her pet cat and how it likes to chase mice and birds, and all of the other animals become offended and leave. However, the White Rabbit appears and, apparently mistaking Alice for his maid, asks her to bring him his gloves and fan. Alice goes into his house to look for them. Finding another bottle like the first one, she drinks it and becomes so big that she gets stuck in the house. The White Rabbit and his friend, Bill the Lizard, become alarmed at her large arm sticking out of the window and talk about burning the house down. They throw pebbles at Alice which turn into cakes, and Alice eats them to become smaller.
Alice makes her escape from the house, distracting a puppy much larger than she is by throwing a stick, and meets a caterpillar, who is sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar asks her to explain herself, but Alice says that she can’t because she isn’t really herself. Alice tells him that she keeps changes sizes and can’t remember things that she thinks she should remember. The Caterpillar asks her to recite the poem about Father William, and Alice recites Carroll’s parody version instead of the original poem. The Caterpillar agrees that Alice said the poem wrong. He asks Alice what size she would like to be and gets offended when Alice says that being only three inches tall is awful because that is the Caterpillar’s height. However, he does tell Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other will make her shorter, not explaining which is which. Alice experiments with bits of mushroom until she finally becomes her normal size again. She keeps the mushroom pieces so that she can change size again, if she needs to. (Has anyone ever made a video game version of Alice in Wonderland where the player, as Alice, has to become bigger or smaller to get through different levels? If no one has, I think someone should.)
Alice soon makes herself small again so that she can go into a little house. Alice speaks to the footman of the house, who has just accepted an invitation for the Duchess to join the Queen for croquet. The footman rambles on about how there’s no use in Alice knocking because they’re both on the same side of the door and everyone inside is making too much noise to hear her. Not getting any straight answers about whether or not she’s allowed to go inside, Alice decides that the footman is an idiot and just lets herself in. The Duchess is sitting inside with a baby while her cook makes pepper soup. The Duchess’s cat, the Cheshire Cat, grins at Alice in a strange way. (The Cheshire cat comes from an expression that was popular in the 19th century – “grinning like a Cheshire cat” – although the origins of the phrase are uncertain. The Cheshire Cat wasn’t actually in the original version of the story.) Alice becomes alarmed when the cook begins throwing things at the Duchess and the baby, but the Duchess tells her to mind her own business. The Duchess is rough with the baby and throws it. Alice catches it and takes it away, worrying that the Duchess might kill it, but the baby turns into a pig, and Alice has to let it go. Alice thinks that it would have been a very ugly child and is better off as pig, which reminds her of other children she knows. (Ouch.)
Alice spots the Cheshire Cat and tries to ask it for directions. It directs her to the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, telling her that they’re both mad. (These also come from old expressions, “mad as a hatter” and “mad as a March hare.”) Alice says that she doesn’t want to “go among mad people”, but the Cheshire Cat says that can’t be helped because everyone is mad here, including Alice, because she wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t. He says that he will see her later when she plays croquet with the Queen. Before the Cat vanishes completely, he asks her what happened to the baby, and when Alice says that it turned into a pig, the Cat says, “I thought it would.”
Alice ends up at the tea party that the March Hare and the Mad Hatter are having with the Dormouse. (This tea party also was not part of Carroll’s original version of the story.) Although they tell her there is no room at the table for her, Alice notes that it’s a big table with a lot of chairs, so she sits down, uninvited. The conversation is confused, and the Mad Hatter tells Alice a riddle without knowing the answer to it himself. Alice says that he’s wasting time, and the Mad Hatter says that Time won’t do anything he wants now because he was accused of “murdering the time” when he sang “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!” before the Queen of Hearts (he messed up with the timing of the song), and now it’s always six o’clock and always tea time (that’s when people, including the Liddells, used to have tea time when the story was written). This gives them no time to clean up between tea times, so they just keep moving around the table. Alice tries to ask them what they do when they get back to their original positions at the table, but the March Hare changes the subject. The Dormouse begins telling the story of the three sisters who lived at the bottom of the Treacle Well and were learning to draw things that begin with the letter ‘M’. (As the March Hare says, “Why not?”) Alice tries to ask questions, and starts to say, “I don’t think-” The Mad Hatter says, “Then you shouldn’t talk.” Alice gets offended and decides to leave.
She finds a door that takes her back to the hallway where she was in the beginning, and she is able to open the door that she couldn’t before, which leads her into a beautiful garden. There, she finds some playing cards painting the roses. It turns out that they accidentally planted white roses, and the Queen wants red ones, so they’re just painting the roses so she won’t find out. The King and Queen of Hearts enter the garden, and the Queen begins demanding to know who Alice is and who the cards are. Alice gives a flippant remark, and the Queen screams, “Off with her head!” (Which, I think, is about the third time in the story that someone has said that. The Duchess was the first.) The King points out that Alice is only a child. The Queen invites Alice to play croquet. The White Rabbit explains that the Duchess isn’t coming because she’s supposed to be executed for boxing the Queen’s ears.
In this game of croquet, the mallets are flamingos (ostriches in the original version) and the balls are hedgehogs. The card soldiers have to bend themselves to be the arches. Alice can’t control her flamingo or hedgehog, nobody waits for their turn, and the Queen keeps ordering people’s heads to be taken off. Alice is very worried, and when the Cheshire Cat appears, Alice tells him that nobody is playing fairly. She notices that the Queen is listening, so she comments that the Queen is likely to win, which pleases her. The King says that he doesn’t like the Cat and wants him removed. The Queen orders its execution, but the Cheshire Cat makes its body disappear. The executioner doesn’t know what to do because he’s used to removing heads from bodies and can’t deal with a bodiless head. Alice suggests asking the Duchess because it’s her cat.
The Duchess seems glad to see Alice, and as Alice’s mind wanders, the two of them have a discussion about what the moral of the situation is. (Victorian children’s books often had a moral to the story. All of the Duchess’s and Alice’s suggested morals are proverbs that don’t fit the situation at all or are parodies on popular sayings. “Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves” is a parody of “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.”) The croquet game continues until everybody has been arrested except for the King, Queen, and Alice.
The Queen asks Alice if she’s met the Mock Turtle yet (which is supposedly what mock turtle soup is made from). Alice hears the King pardon everyone who was arrested. The Queen orders the Gryphon to take Alice to the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon tells her that nobody ever really gets executed when the Queen orders an execution – it’s all just the Queen’s fancy.
When the Gryphon introduces Alice to the Mock Turtle, the Mock Turtle explains that he used to be a real turtle. He talks about his youth and the lessons he had when he was young. (The “extras” that he and Alice describe – French, music, and washing – are a parody of British boarding schools at the time and a play of the word “extra.” These things were not provided as free “extras”, and of course, washing isn’t a lesson – they would cost extra at boarding school and the additional costs would be added on to the fees.) The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle describe the Lobster-Quadrille dance to Alice, demonstrating it (while singing a song that is a parody of The Spider and the Fly). They ask Alice about her adventures, and she tells them everything that’s happened to her so far. When she mentions not being able to recite poems correctly, they have her try another, and she recites “‘Tis the voice of the Lobster” instead of “The Sluggard” by Isaac Watts. The Mock Turtle sings “Turtle Soup”, which is a parody of the song “Star of the Evening” by James M. Sayles.
Then, they hear that a trial is beginning. It turns out that it’s a trial for the Knave of Hearts who stole the Queen’s tarts. During the trial, which is basically nonsense, Alice feels herself growing larger. She is called to give evidence, but because she is becoming too tall, she is told to leave the court. The King says that it’s Rule Forty-Two and is the oldest rule in the book, but Alice points out that the oldest rule should be Rule One. The White Rabbit presents a letter, supposedly written by the defendant, which is a nonsense poem. (This one is a shortened version of another nonsense poem by Carroll which loosely parodied the song “Alice Gray” and isn’t recognizably close to the original here.) The King and Queen try to figure out what the poem means, but Alice doesn’t think it means anything. The Queen wants to give the sentence first and the verdict afterward, and Alice says that’s nonsense and she doesn’t care what they think because they’re just a pack of cards. The cards come flying at her, and Alice wakes up.
Apparently, the entire adventure was a dream, and Alice feel asleep on the river bank with her sister. Alice tells her sister about the dream, and her sister is enchanted. Alice’s sister imagines Alice in years to come, telling other children the same story.
The story of Alice in Wonderland is over 150 years old, as of this writing, and it has been reprinted in many different languages and editions. The edition that I’m using for this review is actually a combined edition with the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, from 1960 with added notes by Martin Gardner. I like editions with added notes because there is quite a lot to explain about both Lewis Carroll and his stories. This is going to be a very long review, and there are a number of things I want to explain before I even start summarizing the story.
Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Dodgson, was actually a mathematician at Oxford in England. His modern reputation is somewhat dubious because one of his hobbies was photography, and among the pictures he took were pictures of children, including many in various states of undress, some nude or partially nude and some in nightgowns. Charles Dodgson never married and never had any children of his own, and his sexuality (or relative lack thereof, as some have also speculated) is debatable. He was known for being friendly with the children of many of his friends and colleagues, and he enjoyed spending time with them, talking to them, telling them stories, and teaching them things … and taking pictures of them. The parents of the children knew about the photographs, including the nude ones, and gave permission for them to be taken, even keeping copies themselves.
Scholars debate about Dodgson’s photographs and the intention behind them. Not all of the pictures feature children who are undressed; some are just wearing ordinary clothes and others are dressed in fanciful costumes, like characters from stories. However, the nude or partially nude pictures are troubling because the children in those pictures were not babies, like the ones in modern Anne Geddes photographs. By modern standards, there would be no innocent reason for taking pictures of unclothed children like that. However, some scholars point out that photography was a relatively new hobby at that time, and people were taking pictures of things and other people in ways that people wouldn’t now because they were so eager to try out this new technology. People were realizing that they could use photography to immortalize loved ones in ways that they never could before. (Look up 19th century post-mortem photography only if you’re not easily startled or disgusted.)
There is some evidence that Victorian people were not scandalized by the idea of nude photographs of children, perhaps considering them a preservation of a state of innocence that would gradually disappear as the children grew up, almost like how some people today still photograph nude babies. Dodgson wasn’t the only one taking pictures of nude children at the time, and he apparently did so with the full knowledge and approval of the children’s parents, giving them photographs to keep. On the other hand, without knowing Dodgson’s real intentions, it’s difficult to say whether or not these pictures were really as innocent as they were once supposed, and some people consider that Dodgson may have taken advantage of the innocence of both the children and parents involved for his own purposes. After his death, some of his relatives removed some of the pages in his diaries, censoring them before they could be made public, so it’s difficult to say what they removed and why. This censorship could have had something to do with his photography hobby and how he felt about it, or it could be unrelated, maybe covering up his romantic feelings for someone else or maybe personal or professional quarrels that might have proved embarrassing to people still alive at the time he died. Without the missing diary pages, there isn’t really much to go on, and the speculation is really just speculation.
Not what Alice Liddell really looked like.
One of the favorite child friends of Dodgson’s was Alice Liddell, one of the daughters of the ecclesiastical dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson often visited the Liddell family and took Alice and her sisters on outings. On one of their outings together, when he and a friend took the Liddell girls on a boating trip on the Thames, Alice begged Dodgson to tell a story, and he began making up the story that became Alice in Wonderland, making Alice herself the heroine. Dodgson was still friends with the Liddell family at that point, although he later had a falling out with the family for reasons that are still unknown. The reasons for the falling out were apparently part of the pages removed from his diary, and some people have speculated that Dodgson may have behaved improperly toward one or more of the girls, although that’s not the only possibility; Dodgson may have had a different type of romantic indiscretion at that time, possibly involving the children’s governess or Alice’s older sister Lorina, and he may have also quarreled with the dean over college politics. Dodgson was a contemporary of another famous author of children’s fantasy books, George MacDonald. (I’ll be talking about him more when I get to The Light Princess and The Princess and the Goblin.) The two of them were friends, and MacDonald was the one who urged Dodgson to publish Alice in Wonderland after his own children read it and liked it. (MacDonald’s children were also among the ones photographed by Dodgson.)
This documentary has more details about the history Lewis Carroll, his photography, and his writing. Overall, I think that probably the most accurate answer in the documentary to the question of what was really going on in Oxford in the mid-1800s is “Who knows?” Some people gave much more definite-sounding responses to the question, but there are equally vehement opinions that take completely opposite views of the situation, and with the obvious gaps in the available information, I don’t think that level of certainty is warranted. The documentary covers various viewpoints and ends with a photograph that is potentially damaging to Lewis Carroll’s reputation, one that would have been scandalous even in the Victorian era if it was really taken by Carroll (it wasn’t proven definitely, but the experts’ conclusions were that seems likely or at least credible, and its time period and quality are in keeping with Carroll’s work) because the subject of the photograph (possibly Lorina Liddell) would have been too old for the photograph to be considered “innocent” even back then. The girl in that photograph would have been above the minimum age of consent for her time but still below the age of consent for ours, making that photograph suspicious by everyone’s standards.
My Reaction
This is not sexy, Martin Grotjahn.
My theory about the issue? I kind of doubt that Carroll was a pedophile. Kind of. Partly, my reasoning is based on listening to and reading the different arguments on each side, and it seems to me that those who express doubt about the accusation have more concrete evidence to support their points (they reference other photographers who took pictures similar to Carroll’s, they discuss the age of consent in the Victorian era, they note inconsistencies in the reported ages of Carroll’s female friends, they provide details about different sources of information, etc.) than the people who insist that he “obviously” and “without doubt” was sexually attracted to little girls, who seem to be largely reactionary and make I statements like “I can’t believe” that there was anything innocent going on and “it makes me angry.” (Some of the people interviewed the Timeline Documentary speak like that.)
Between the two choices, I’d be more inclined to go with reasoned arguments and cited sources more than gut reactions. My reviews here on this site are full of my personal feelings and gut reactions on a number of topics because that is the nature of opinion-based reviews, but I’ve had training in evaluating historical sources and writing research papers. Feelings change over time, and you can’t cite gut reactions as evidence in a thesis paper. The first essay that postulated that Alice in Wonderland may contain sexual symbolism, written by A.M.E. Goldschmidt in the 1930s, may have actually been written as a parody of contemporary psycho-analysis, and some of the “obvious” sexual symbols cited in later essays and analysis make no sense to me. In 1947, a psychoanalyst named Martin Grotjahn said that the scene where Alice’s neck suddenly grows longer is a symbol “almost too obvious for words.” No, it’s really not. I had to sit and think for awhile about why a person with a giraffe-like neck would be considered sexy, and then, it occurred to me that he’s probably really thinking of a piece of male anatomy instead of a girl’s neck, which doesn’t make any sense for the context of the story. Even now, I’m still not completely sure if that’s what he’s really getting at, and if I have to ponder it that much, it’s not that “obvious.” It’s about as bad as all the “that’s what she said” jokes I’ve heard. Quite a lot of unrelated things can be made to sound raunchy if you add “that’s what she said” after them, and the more times you hear that, the more annoying and less funny that kind of joke becomes. When a scholar does something like that in literary criticism, I’ve noticed that people are reluctant to question it because they assume that the scholar knows something they don’t, but I really don’t understand that comment and I don’t mind saying that I don’t think it makes much sense.
Also, I can’t help but notice in the descriptions of Carroll’s interactions with the Liddell girls that he visited them in different locations and took them on outings in different locations and that they were in the company of different people during these visits. The Timeline documentary mentions that the children’s governess would have been with them, even if the parents weren’t, and on the day that he took them on the boat trip where he began composing Alice in Wonderland, they were accompanied by his friend, Robinson Duckworth. I’m not a specialist in Carroll’s life, but it isn’t clear to me, from their descriptions, whether or not he was ever completely alone with the girls or with any child in particular, with no other witnesses. He may have been, but it seems to me from others’ descriptions that they were often chaperoned by different people. If some form of abuse or suspicious behavior were going on, it would be more difficult to evade or fool multiple witnesses. In 1932, when Alice was 80 years old, she went to New York to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia University for her participation in the creation of a piece of iconic children’s literature and to take part in a centennial celebration of Dodgson’s birthday. I would think that if she had bad memories of Dodgson, she would have been less likely to take such a long journey at her advanced age in order to attend this celebration. On the other hand, that’s still just a guess of mine, and the suspicions about Dodgson, now raised, really can’t be proven either way. It still remains a possibility, and that’s why I only “kind of” think that Dodgson’s intentions might have been innocent.
In the end, I don’t have a firm theory so much as a conclusion: if you need to have definite answers, without debate, qualification, or reservation, in order to acquire knowledge, history probably isn’t your field. My first degree was in history, and I’ve noticed so many times that people discount historians and historical knowledge because the field doesn’t make firm, definite statements on many debatable aspects of history like this, and times when historians and private individuals have tried, they have often been proven wrong in some respect. However, that’s exactly the point: serious, professional historians don’t make definite statements unless and until they have definite proof because they know that there’s always a chance that they could be proven wrong at a later date when new information surfaces. It’s happened before, so true professionals are usually cautious. It’s not that they don’t know anything, it’s just that they’re aware of the limits of their knowledge, and they are careful in how they present what they really know in order to prevent people from drawing the wrong conclusions too quickly. It would be irresponsible to tell people that something is definitely true when the circumstances aren’t definite, so instead, they tell people about the information they know they have and the things are “possible,” “likely,” or “probable,” which irritates people who expect definite answers from experts. We know some things, and we also are aware of what we don’t know and what pieces we’re missing, which is also very important.
It doesn’t matter so much in modern times that we can’t completely prove Dodgson/Carroll’s intentions regarding his photography one way or the other as that we understand that the controversy exists. Without the diary pages, which would have been proof of his thoughts and intentions (and which were probably destroyed long ago), the most we could say is that the photographs suggest a possibility. Because, as scholars have pointed out, Dodgson wasn’t the only person who took photographs of children like that without apparently causing scandal, I wouldn’t say that it’s “definite” that his behavior or intentions were inappropriate. The final photograph in the documentary above is bad, but because they never proved definitely that he made it, I’d hesitate to call it “probable,” even though it seemed to me that the documentary makers were fishing for that so they could have a compelling revelation for their documentary. I don’t know for certain whether Charles Dodgson was or was not a pedophile, but I do know that it’s possible that he may have been one or at least had feelings or urges in that direction. There are enough indications that it remains possible, even though it’s unprovable. If you’re okay accepting as fact that an idea is “possible,” but probably not “probable” and certainly not “certain” … you could do well studying history, and just getting through my explanation (if you managed all that) means that you’re more than ready to tackle the logic puzzles of Alice in Wonderland. They’re kind of like that when you turn them around in your head.
Parodies, In-Jokes, and Literary References
There are a couple of things that are easier to prove about Alice in Wonderland than whether or not Lewis Carroll may have been attracted to the real Alice, and these more easily provable aspects of the story are what make it particularly interesting for me. First, parts of the Alice stories are actually parodies of popular stories and rhymes from the 19th century. Dodgson/Carroll particularly liked to poke fun at didactic stories and rhymes that were used to teach children useful lessons and morals. He liked to twist those more serious stories and rhymes into things that were basically nonsense. Modern readers are more likely to focus on the nonsense and less likely to notice the parodies in the Alice stories because they are not familiar with the original rhymes and stories being parodied, as the original readers of these books would have been. The original readers would have known immediately what he was making fun of. For example, “How Doth the Little Crocodile” is a parody on “Against Idleness and Mischief” by Isaac Watts, which is about the importance of using time well. “You are Old, Father William” or “Ballad of Father William” is a parody on “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” by Robert Southey, which gives advice to the young about how to behave so that they may enjoy a happier old age. These types of poems would have been given to Victorian children as something to read and memorize during their lessons, and so they would have noticed that Carroll was poking fun at them. That’s why I like editions of the Alice books that come with extra notes, pointing out the parodies and original references, so I can be in on the joke. On the other hand, modern readers will have no trouble recognizing the source of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat” as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “The Star” by Jane Taylor (first published in 1806, although modern readers think of it as the song instead of the poem, and not all of them know all the verses). It’s pretty common throughout history for bored students to make jokes about the things that they’re required to learn in their lessons, and many of these poems are old enough for Carroll himself to have learned them when he was a student. It’s possible that he may have started playing with parodies of his school lessons or popular songs long before he started writing Alice in Wonderland, although that’s just my personal guess, based on my own school years. I did things like that, and some of my friends did, too. (People older than me also remember On Top of Spaghetti and Joy to the World, the School Burned Down – not Carroll parodies and much cruder than his work, but examples of the way kids can twist things that are commonly known for the amusement of their friends.)
The second important point about the Alice stories is that they are full of puzzles, riddles, and word games. Remember that Lewis Carroll /Charles Dodgson was really a mathematician and scholar, and he liked to play with logic puzzles and word games. There are a lot of puns in Alice in Wonderland, some of which reference places in and around Oxford, like the Treacle Well where three sisters supposedly live – Lacie (anagram of Alice), Elsie (her older sister was Lorina Charlotte – L.C. Liddell), and Tillie (her younger sister Edith’s nickname). Alice in Wonderland is full of inside jokes, riddles, and puns like this. There are many in-jokes for people who are familiar with places in Oxford, and there are many in-jokes that Dodgson and the girls had with each other. Some of the strange characters in Wonderland are apparently parodies of people that Dodgson and the Liddells actually knew. Dodgson himself explained that he is the Dodo in the story. Dodgson spoke with a stutter, and when he would introduce himself to people, his name would often come out, “Do-Do-Dodgson.” “Dodo” Dodgson was an in-joke that the Liddells would have recognized.
Part of the trouble with analyzing Alice in Wonderland is that it’s possible to take it too far. Some of the parodies are obvious to people who are familiar with 19th century literature and poetry, and the references to places in Oxford are noticeable to people who are familiar with Oxford, but there are so many in-jokes in the story that might not be possible for modern readers to understand them all because we might not know all the in-jokes that Dodgson and the Liddells had with each other. So many strange and surreal things happen in the story that it’s possible to read too much into all of it. Some of it may have simply been meant to be silly references to other stories that Dodgson told the children before Alice’s story, long-standing in-jokes, or random silliness, and may not have any deeper meaning than that. When I read other reviews and analysis of the stories, I sometimes get the feeling like the critics are trying too hard, reaching and reading too much into everything. There’s a lot to enjoy about the story just as it is, without over-analyzing it to death, looking for hidden psychology that might not actually be there because a major part of it was based on parody and in-jokes in the beginning. If you want to spend some time appreciating the logic puzzles and word play and comparing the parody poems to their originals, that’s fine, but it’s also fine to just enjoy the book for the imaginative nonsense. It’s a long, strange trip, and I think it’s perfectly okay to just sit back and enjoy.
Note About the Illustrations and Original Version
Something else I’d like to mention before starting on the story itself is that the Alice who is depicted in the classic illustrations is not actually the original Alice Liddell. The illustrated Alice is a blond girl, but Alice Liddell was a brunette with shorter hair. Lewis Carroll apparently suggested that the illustrator use a picture of Mary Hilton Badcock as the model for the book illustrations, and Mary Hilton Badcock did look similar to the finished illustrations, although it’s also possible that the illustrator used a different child with a similar appearance as his model.
Also, the story as Carroll originally wrote it was called Alice’s Adventures Underground. Carroll did his own illustrations in the original version, showing Alice more like the real Alice, and there were a number of differences in the story. For example, in the original version, the White Rabbit drops a nosegay of flowers, which Alice smells, and that causes her to shrink, something that didn’t happen in the later version. If you want to read the original, it’s available through Project Gutenberg.
The Dragons Are Singing Tonight by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Peter Sis, 1993.
This is a picture book of poems about dragons, but that description doesn’t quite do the book justice.
Jack Prelutsky is best known for his books of humorous poems for children, but not all of the poems in this book are funny. Some of them are humorous or have humorous twists, but others are just about the magic and wonder of the idea of dragons, some of which only exist in the imagination. Sometimes, just believing in magic or imagining it can be magical by itself!
The pictures are all excellent, colorful, and fanciful, and they really bring the poems to life. The book is larger than average, and the pictures span full pages.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Coconut Kind of Day: Island Poems by Lynn Joseph, illustrated by Sandra Speidel, 1990.
The
author’s note in the back of the book explains that the author was originally
from Trinidad and that she wrote this book of poems about some of the things
that remembers from growing up there. She
also explains some of the terms used in the poems that people who aren’t
familiar with Trinidad might not know:
Palet man
– Ice-cream man who sells ice cream on sticks, like popsicles (I knew this one
because I’m used to the Spanish word “paletero” from growing up in Arizona.)
Soursop – A type of fruit often used as an ice cream flavor
Pullin’ seine – When the fishermen start pulling in their nets, and other people help.
Jumbi man – A bogey man. It’s popular for people to dress in a Jumbi costume at Carnival time.
Sorrel – A plant used in making a drink around Christmas
The poems are mostly about small, everyday things, like going to school or to the market or how the children play together or get ice cream from the palet man.
There is one poem where the girls want to play cricket with the boys, but the boys won’t let them, and they decide that when they’re older, they’ll have a cricket team of their own.
The pictures are beautiful, done in an impressionistic style.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 