This book is a classic piece of children’s literature! This is the first book in a series of about the adventures of the Banks children with their magical nanny, Mary Poppins.
Mr. and Mrs. Banks of Cherry-Tree Lane have four children: Jane, Michael, and the infant twins, John and Barbara. When the story begins, the children’s nanny has just suddenly left her job with no real explanation. Mrs. Banks is beside herself, wondering what to do about this household upheaval, and Mr. Banks offers the practical suggestion that she should advertise for a new nanny in the newspaper. Mrs. Banks decides that’s a good idea, but a strange wind from the East brings an unexpected answer to this domestic problem.
When Mary Poppins arrives at the Banks’ house to take the position of nanny, it seems like she was blown there by the wind. When the children ask her, she says that’s indeed what happened, but she offers no other explanation. Mrs. Banks discusses the position of nanny with her, but it turns out that it’s more like Mary Poppins is interviewing her and evaluating the children to see if they’ll do. Mary Poppins refuses to provide references when Mrs. Banks asks for them (I would find that worrying), saying that people don’t do that anymore because it’s too old-fashioned. Mrs. Banks actually buys that explanation and doesn’t want to seem old-fashioned, so she stops asking. Mary Poppins basically grants herself the position of nanny as if she were doing the Banks’ family a favor. Maybe she is.
Jane and Michael can tell right away that Mary Poppins is no ordinary nanny. When she begins unpacking her belongings, it seems at first that her carpet bag is empty, but she soon starts pulling many different things out of it, including some things that should be too big to be in the bag at all. Then, she gives the children some “medicine” (she doesn’t say what kind of medicine it is or what it’s supposed to do) that magically tastes like everyone’s favorite flavor.
From there, the story is episodic. Each chapter is like its own short story.
On her day off, Mary Poppins meets up with the Match Man called Bert, who also paints chalk pictures, and when he doesn’t have enough money to take her to tea, they jump into one of his chalk paintings and have a lovely tea there. The children aren’t present for that adventure, but they do go to tea at Mary’s uncle’s house.
Mary’s uncle, Mr. Wigg, is a jolly man … maybe a little too jolly. It’s his birthday, which has filled him full of high spirits, and he literally can’t keep his feet on the ground. When they arrive, he’s hovering in the air. He says that it’s because he’s filled up with Laughing Gas because he finds so many things funny. It’s happened to him before, and he can’t get down to earth again until he thinks of something very serious. The whole situation is so funny that Jane and Michael begin to laugh and find themselves floating in the air, too. Even though Mary isn’t amused and doesn’t laugh, she makes herself float in the air also and bring up the tea table so they can all have their tea in midair. The merriment only ends when Mary Poppins finally tells the children that it’s time to go home, which is very serious indeed.
Mary Poppins understands what animals are saying, helping to sort out matters for a pampered and over-protected little dog who desperately wants a friend to come live with him. Then, when the children see a cow walking down their street, Mary Poppins says that cow is a personal friend of her mother’s and is looking for a falling star. On Mary Poppins’s birthday, she and the children attend a bizarre party in the zoo where the animals are their hosts.
There is an episode in the book which has some uncomfortable racial portrayals. It takes place when Mary Poppins shows the children how a magical compass can take them to different places around the world, and they meet people who are basically caricatures of different racial groups. (This episode has resulted in the book being banned by some libraries. P. L. Travers received complaints about it in her lifetime, and she revised the scene in later printings of the book, which is why you’ll see books labeled as “Revised Edition.” I have more to say about this scene, but I’ll save it for my reaction.)
Mary Poppins and the children visit a bizarre shop where the owner’s fingers are candy and grow back after she breaks them off and gives them to the children. (That’s actually pretty freaky.) The children save the gold paper stars from the gingerbread they buy at the shop, and later, they see Mary Poppins and the shop owner and her daughters putting the stars up in the sky.
There is a story about the babies, John and Barbara, and how they understand things that the adults and older children don’t, like what animals, the wind, and sunshine are saying. They are sad to learn that they will forget these things as they grow up.
Toward the end of the book, Mary Poppins takes the children Christmas shopping, and they meet Maia, one of the Pleiades (here she is considered to be a star as well as a mythological figure, and she looks like a young, scantily-clad girl), who has come to Earth to do her Christmas shopping as well.
In the end, Mary Poppins leaves the Banks family suddenly when the wind changes directions, flying off into the sky on the wind with her umbrella. She does not say goodbye, and the children are very upset. Mrs. Banks is angry with Mary Poppins for her sudden departure on a night when she was counting on her to be there to take care of the children. The children try to defend her, though, and say that they really want her back, even though she’s often cross with them. However, she does leave behind presents for the children that hint that she may come back someday.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
In some ways, the Mary Poppins in the original books isn’t quite as pleasant as Julie Andrews in the Disney movie version. The Mary Poppins in the book is vain and stuck up. She can be intimidating in her manner, refuses to answer questions, and even gets rude and snippy with the children. She was a little like that in the movie, but in the book, she’s even more so. After any strange or magical thing happens and the children want to talk about it, Mary Poppins gets angry at them and denies that any such thing happened at all. I found that rather annoying because it’s kind of like gaslighting, denying things happened when they really did happen. I think we’re meant to assume that’s because the adults aren’t allowed to find out that magical things have happened because they might put a stop to it or because Mary Poppins realizes that the children can only enjoy this kind of magic for a brief phase of their lives and that they’ll have to grow up in the more mundane world, just like the little twins can’t help but lose their ability to talk to animals. It’s a little sad, but I think it’s meant to provide some kind of rational explanation about how magic can exist in the world but yet go unnoticed by most people.
I’d like to talk more about the racially-problematic episodes with the magic compass. A compass that can take people to different areas of the world just for asking is a good idea, but the people they meet in the places they go are all uncomfortable caricatures of different races. The one part that I’m not really sure about is how seriously these were meant. When I was trying to decide what to say about this, I considered the idea that aspects of this part of the story may have been meant as a parody of things from other children’s books and popular culture at the time. I have seen even older vintage children’s books that poke fun at concepts from earlier stories, so it occurred to me that this book might be making fun of concepts about people from around the world that young children of the time might have from things they’ve read in other books. There is a kind of humor throughout the book that involves puns and plays on certain ideas, like the way her uncle insists that he floats when he’s in a humorous mood because he’s buoyed up by “Laughing Gas”, which is not what real “Laughing Gas” is. It’s like what a child might picture as “Laughing Gas”, if they didn’t already know what that term means. It’s possible that part of this scene might be parodying other children’s fantasy books about magical travel, but it’s still very uncomfortable to read the original version of this scene, if you don’t have one of the revised editions of the book.
On the other hand, I suspect that the author isn’t really that thoughtful or self-aware by the way the adult characters speak throughout the book series. At the end of the book, when Michael is upset at Mary Poppins suddenly leaving and he throws a fit and argues with her, his mother tells him not to act like a “Red Indian.” I’m not entirely clear on what that comment was supposed to mean in that context, but Mrs. Banks uses it as if she does, so it seems that there is some implied insult there, maybe equating Michael’s behavior to being “savage” or “uncivilized” or something of that nature. Even Mary Poppins herself uses racial language throughout the series, using words like “hottentot” or “blackamoor” to criticize the children when they misbehave. It makes me think that the author was accustomed to that kind of talk herself. If Mary Poppins can get snooty as a character, I think I have the right to express my disapproval of her behavior as well.
While I like the basic character of a magical nanny who takes children on magical adventures, I don’t like either those comments or the compass scenes because the obvious caricatures are uncomfortable, and I don’t think they make good story material for children. I would recommend saving that version for adults who are interested in reading or studying nostalgic literature and use the revised versions for children, who would probably just prefer to have a story they can enjoy for fun without needing a lesson on racial attitudes of the past to understand it. If they’re curious, they can always have a look at the original later, when they’re old enough to understand it better and put it perspective. In the revised compass scenes in later books, some printings still have people but some of the offensive words removed, and in later printings, the children meet different types of animals instead of people.
The title of the book tells you what it’s about; this is a children’s picture book about starlings. That sounds pretty straight-forward and even a little dull, but there is more to learn about starlings than I imagined, and the author of this book has an imaginative way of explaining information. I love books that cover odd topics in detail, and I enjoyed the whimsical quality of this book. The pictures are detailed black-and-white drawings, some with captions like comics. Most of them explain the anatomy of the birds or their habits, but they have some unique ways of expressing educational information.
The book begins by describing the singing of starlings and then explains how farmers view starlings. Starlings can be a pest to farmers when they eat their fruit or the seeds the farmers are trying to plant, but they can also be helpful when they eat weed seeds and prevent weeds from coming up in the farmers’ fields. Of course, the birds don’t know when they’re helping or hindering because, as far as they’re concerned, they’re just there to eat any food that happens to be available at the moment. I like the little picture of the bird reading a mystery book, trying to figure out why farmers don’t mind when they eat some seeds and try to scare them away from others. That’s an example of the whimsy I was talking about.
The book continues describing what starlings eat and places where they like to roost, and it explains how they affect people living in cities (mainly, messing up their cars). There were times when people in cities considered them such a nuisance that they would shoot them, and some poor people hunted them for food. Actually, the entire reason why we have starlings in the US is that people over-hunted other types of birds (there is a disturbing picture of hunters with piles of dead birds at one point in the book), and birds are an important part of the ecosystem. Even though they can annoy farmers when they eat seeds and fruit, they also eat bugs that are pests to crops.
I was really struck by the passage that explained how starlings were first brought to the United States and why they were brought here:
“Some people think that starlings have no right to food or nesting-places because they are not ‘American birds.’ Yet all the starlings you see were born in America. So were their parents and grandparents and great-great-grandparents and all their relatives clear back to 1890. In that year their ancestors were caught in Europe and brought in cages to America. So many American birds had been killed at that time by our own ancestors that our crops were growing wormier and wormier each year, while insect pests grew worse and worse. So starlings were imported to help us fight the insects. They were freed in Central Park in New York City and left to look out for themselves.”
This explanation uses simplified language for children, and it also oddly evokes imagery of human beings. We don’t normally refer to animals as “foreigners” because animals don’t speak different human languages or have allegiances to foreign governments like people from other countries do. When we talk about new species that have been introduced to an environment where they did not originally belong and quickly spread out and multiple, we usually call them “invasive species.” In that case, the ecological concern is that the new invasive species will disrupt the balance of the natural environment and crowd out native species, but the author is trying to point out that the situation with the starlings was different. The starlings were introduced to the environment in the US on purpose, not by accident, and it was done specifically because they were meant to a solution to a problem. The environment had already been disrupted by humans who had moved into areas where they had not lived previously and where they killed too many of the native species themselves without regard to what that would do to the natural environment and their own farming. The introduction of the starlings was meant to restore a balance that had been lost. However, the people who had originally caused the problem didn’t see it that way, seeing the starlings as pests because they were “foreign.” While birds in general may occasionally be a nuisance because they don’t understand human priorities, they still perform useful functions for human beings as they go about their lives, just being the birds they are – eating annoying weed seeds and bugs and scavenging food from what humans throw out.
“People who think that starlings should be starvelings because they are ‘foreigners’ should remember that these American-born birds save much of what they themselves throw away and are still helping us to fight insects as they did in 1890.”
I understand what the author is trying to explain about balance in the ecological system, but I was struck by the human imagery that the passage evokes: “Foreigners” who came to New York City, not unlike immigrants fresh off the boat from Ellis Island during the 19th century, set free to make their way in a strange environment among people who often regarded them as worthless pests, disliking them while still using the useful services they provided. The comparison still fascinates me. At first, I wasn’t sure that the author meant to make that broader comparison here. I thought he probably used that language just to simply the ecological concepts for children’s understanding, but the author does make another comparison a little further on:
“So let’s be fair. If American-born starlings are foreigners, then so are all people in America except the Indians (Native Americans). So are many kinds of birds, animals, and plants. Our ancestors brought them here from other countries. But if all these creatures, and ourselves, are American now, then so are the starlings. Yes indeed!”
So get off your high horse, starling-haters.
At several points in the book, the author compares birds to airplanes, explaining their muscles and flying mechanisms like machinery. I liked the page where the author compares different planes and helicopters to types of birds (cruisers being like gliding eagles and albatrosses, fast-turning speed planes like starlings and swallows, and hovering helicopters like humming birds). The parts that describe how birds cling to branches as they sleep and how their wings move look accurate and helpful. The part about how a bird creates eggs is hilarious. The text about the formation of the egg inside the bird isn’t bad. It completely skips over the subject of the fertilization of eggs (understandably), and the picture show the bird as a kind of egg-making factory with little men assembling the parts of the egg in stages instead of showing a bird’s reproductive anatomy.
In the upper right corners of this section of the book, there are little squares with a flying bird because part of the book is meant to be uses as a flip book to see a bird flying. The page shown above with the boy flipping through the book shows how to use the flip book portion.
There is a section of the book that explains how baby birds develop in the egg and eventually hatch.
There is also a section in the book that shows how adult starlings will prepare a nest for their eggs and how they raise their babies.
As I was reading the book, I wondered who the author, Wilfred S. Bronson, was. Bronson was an artist specializing in natural history, and he wrote and illustrated other books for children about animals and natural history. In the years before he wrote this particular book, he served in the US Army during World War I and painted murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. He also participated in expeditions to gather specimens and create illustrations of wildlife for botanical gardens and museums.
I haven’t found a copy of this particular book to read online, but it was republished in 2008 and is still available from Amazon.
Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars by Ellen MacGregor, 1951.
This is the first book in the Miss Pickerell series, which was written to introduce scientific concepts to children in an entertaining way.
The story begins when Miss Pickerell is visiting her brother and her nieces and nephews. She takes the children to ride on a ferris wheel, but she refuses to get on it herself because she’s afraid of heights. Really, all she wants to do is take her pet cow home and start getting her rock collection ready for the exhibition at the state fair.
As she leaves, she offers a ride to a man when the bus he was waiting for didn’t stop for him. Although she isn’t anxious for conversation and would prefer silence after her visit with her noisy nieces and nephews, she does make a comment about the sound of a jet overhead. She explains that airplanes are her nieces’ and nephews’ newest obsession, and she’s glad because they were obsessed with flying saucers before, and at least airplanes actually exists. The man riding with her, Mr. Haggerty asks Miss Pickerell if she believes in flying saucers and space travel. Miss Pickerell says that she doesn’t believe in flying saucers and doesn’t think any intelligent person would, but Mr. Haggerty tells her that he will soon be traveling to Mars. At first, Miss Pickerell doesn’t believe him. He says that he works for a scientific expedition whose headquarters is nearby, but the captain in charge of the expedition wouldn’t want him to say too much about it too soon, just in case it doesn’t work out well.
However, Miss Pickerell can’t help but get involved in the project, considering that they’re doing it on her land. Miss Pickerell lets Mr. Haggerty out of the car in front of her farm, but when she enters her own house, she can tell that someone else has been there in the weeks that she’s been gone. Then, she spots the space ship at the end of her cow pasture.
Miss Pickerell marches up to one of the people working on the expedition and demands to know what they’re doing on her property. The man says that they thought that the house was abandoned because it had been empty for weeks and they wanted a quiet place to work on their project. Miss Pickerell threatens to call the governor and report them. She picks the governor to call because, since she lives in the country, there are no police nearby, and she’s met the governor before at the state fair, where he’s given her prizes for her rock collection.
When she calls the governor, he isn’t there, so she leaves a message with his wife and decides to talk to the men at the space ship again while she waits for the governor to call her back. Although she’s afraid of heights, Miss Pickerell climbs into the space ship to talk to the men – right before it launches.
Soon, Miss Pickerell is in outer space and headed for trouble because it turns out that, not only was she not supposed to be there but they’ve accidentally left Mr. Haggerty behind. Mr. Haggerty is important because he’s the one who’s supposed to do the calculations for the flight.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I vaguely recalled my mother reading us one or two of the Miss Pickerell books from the library when we were kids. I think I liked them at the time, but it had been so long that I’d really forgotten what they were like.
I can definitely see the educational lessons in the book. After the ship launches, it takes awhile to impress on Miss Pickerell the seriousness of their situation and why they can’t just turn around and go back, during which they talk about Mars as a planet and how the ship’s course is programmed into the computer. A young man on the crew, Wilbur, shows Miss Pickerell how to drink water in outer space, and they talk about what gravity is and why there isn’t any in space. By accident, Miss Pickerell has caused further problems by bringing her hammer with her onto the ship because the hammer is magnetic, and the magnet is interfering with the ship’s equipment. Miss Pickerell’s first instinct is to throw the hammer out a door or window, but there are no windows, and Miss Pickerell is treated to an explanation about atmospheric pressure and oxygen in the space ship. Each event on the ship and on Mars itself requires explanation.
Fortunately, they do make it safely to Mars and back, and Miss Pickerell turns out to be surprisingly helpful and is actually glad that she made the trip. On their return, she finds out that Mr. Haggerty has been taking care of her cow, and the governor has invited her for a visit. The governor gives her an award, and she even brings back rocks from Mars with her and gives some to her nieces and nephews.
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.
Johnny and the Birds by Ian Munn, illustrated by Elizabeth Webbe, 1950.
This cute little picture book is a collection of short stories about a little boy named Johnny and his adventures with wild birds. The stories are very short and are meant to teach children about wild birds.
Johnny and the Catbird – Johnny thinks that he hears a kitten while looking for strawberries, but it’s actually the sound made by a catbird.
The Blue Jays – Father Blue Jay scares a hawk away from his nest.
The Robins – Johnny knows that the Robin eggs have hatched when he sees the bits of blue eggshell under the tree where they live.
The Chickadees – The Chickadees don’t fly south during the winter like other birds, but Johnny’s family helps them when it’s snowing and they need something to eat.
The Crows – Johnny finds a baby Crow out of its nest. Apparently, it’s an orphan, and Johnny fears that it might get eaten by a hawk, so he takes it home and takes care of it. It becomes a pet, and he names it Blackey.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Ruth is little girl whose parents own a doll hospital. She has always been proud and fascinated by how her parents can make old or damaged dolls beautiful again.
However, Ruth’s own beloved doll, Katy, is in need of repair herself. As her parents rush around repairing dolls for their customers, they keep assuring her that Katy’s turn will come next.
After being put off repeatedly, Ruth starts to think that poor Katy will never get the attention that she needs.
When Ruth’s parents realize how discouraged she is, they decide to take a day off for Katy to come first.
This was one of absolute favorites when I was little! The pictures alternate between black and white and color and show the process that Ruth’s parents go through to repair Katy, repaint her body and features, and give her new hair and eyes.
Ruth also gets to pick out an entirely new wardrobe for Katy. I was always fascinated with the description of how Ruth’s parents fixed the doll, and I enjoyed imagining the doll clothes that I would have selected from the ones they showed in the pictures. Making the choices is half the fun!
When Katy is finally finished, she looks beautiful, and Ruth is happy! This is one of the many out of print children’s books that I wish would come back into print!
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 