Alice in Wonderland door Lewis Carroll

1 What made you select this book?

Our school does a musical every year and this year the musical is Alice. I’m taking part in this musical, in the orchestra. When I see the actors performing their parts I really like it! But at first I didn’t know where the story of Alice was about. We saw the movie in our English class last year, but then I wasn’t paying attention very well and I forgot a lot. Therefore I chose to read the book, and get to know the story better. On my phone I downloaded the e-book version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and after I read the book I thought: ‘Maybe I can read this book for an English mark!’ The book doesn’t have a very beautiful front, and because it’s an e-book it also doesn’t have a blurb either. 

2 Who is the main character? Describe this person in as much detail as you can.

Of course Alice is the main character, she’s a little girl who’s seven years old. She is very polite and interested in others, she always wants to know more about everything. She is well educated and has a large imagination. How she looks isn’t really described the story, but I think of her as a small, thin, blonde girl with bright blue eyes. The kind of girl that only wears preppy dresses and skirts, that’s really cute. She often talks about her big sister and her cat, she likes them both a lot. Quite often she starts talking to herself, because of that you know that she likes to sound smart and that she’s proud of herself when she sounds mature.

3 Can you identify with this character? If not, is there someone else in the story you can identify with? In what way?

I can identify myself with Alice, she often asks questions when she don’t get what someone is saying, and she likes being smart. I like being smart to. Also Alice does talk to herself, just like I do sometimes. She’s always interested in others and she likes to know more about them. She dreams and fantasies a lot, that’s just like me. But we look a lot different! She’s a blonde and she’s pretty, I’m not. But I think she has blue eyes, and I have blue eyes too! We’re different because I think she’s a lot more polite than I am. I always try to be polite but I seem to say the wrong things, unlike Alice does. The most important thing we’ve in common: we both meet a lot of crazy people in our lives!

4 Summarize the story (continue on other side if necessary).

First there’s a little girl, Alice, she’s sitting with her big sister underneath a big tree. She has nothing to do, and is bored. Then she sees a white rabbit with pink eyes, and she’s fascinated by him. She only gets more fascinated by the fact that he’s looking at his watch and saying to himself that he’s getting late. Alice got the idea to go after him, and she went after him. She saw him just getting in a large rabbit hole, and went after him, not considering how she ever was going to get out that again. It looked like an endless fall, but when she landed she felt on a heap of dry leaves, in a huge passage. The white rabbit was still in sight. She went after him, but she lost him and came in a hall with doors on all sides. There were large doors, small doors, all kinds of doors. One of the doors lead to a beautiful garden, but she isn’t able to enter the garden. Because the garden is beautiful she wants to go there. All the doors were locked. She found a bottle that said ‘drink me’ of which she was getting smaller, and food labeled with ‘eat me’ that made her bigger. When she’s huge she starts crying, and that creates a pool.  After a while she felt in her own pool of tears, she was small again. There she meets a lot of people, well, they’re animals actually. There’s a mouse that doesn’t like it when she is telling stories about her cat, something she does quite often. I think you can get why the mouse doesn’t like stories about her cat. Also there is a dodo, a kind of bird, that thinks of a race to get dry. It works out, and then they dried up from the pool of tears. After a lot of getting bigger and smaller she got stuck in the rabbit’s house, but she grew so big that her eyes hang out the windows and chimney. She finds a bottle to get smaller and is able to escape. Because of the unusual growth changes, she get a bit upset. When she meets a caterpillar he gives her the smart advise to eat a mushroom, that’ll let her grow and shrimp, but a lot more smooth. She likes the caterpillar, he gives good advices. Then she heads to the house of the Duchess, where she comes across a strange household. There is a pig-baby creature that is kind of scary, and the Cheshire cat that disappears and shows up when you don’t expect. The cook is throwing with all the cooking utensils. When she moves on she meets the Mad Hatter, a hat seller that is always drinking tea (like the English high tea). Together with a dormouse that is sleeping like 90% of the time he is obsessed with time. Alice learns to speak in a proper way, be clear and do not be rude. When she moves on, she is finally able to enter the beautiful garden. There the gardeners are painting all roses red, something she thinks that’s very weird. When she asks, they don’t give a very good reason why they’re doing this, they only make very clear that their heads are cut off if they don’t. In her trip Alice discovered that the queen is an evil woman, she’s screaming all the time: ‘Off with his/her head!’. When the queen enters the garden, together with all her court, Alice is invited to a croquet party. They play croquet in a different way than Alice is used to play; they use flamingo’s and the hedgehogs are soldiers that are bowed. The queen is an evil woman, according to Alice, because every minute she is screaming ‘off with his head!’. The problem starts when the Cheshire cat shows up, because he can appear from nothing. When the queen shouts that he should be beheaded, they don’t know how to cut his head off. He was totally vanished, except for his head. And you can’t behead someone who has no body, or a body that has no head. In the end the game is quit. Alice meets the Mock Turtle that is talking about school, he has an interesting view on things. He tells Alice about lesson, that when he got educated in the ocean, he had the first day 10 hours of school, the second day 9, the third day 8, and so on. Lesson, he tells, comes from the word less. But then they are rudely interrupted, because there’s a trial. Alice is a witness, but she finds food and is able to get really tall. They become scared of her. But then, finally, as the queen is walking to Alice, she is woken up by her sister. She discovers that everything had been a dream!

5 What is your opinion on this book? Why did you (not) enjoy it?

I really liked the book, I only chose it because of the school musical, but it was better than I expected it to be. I’ve seen the move and it was a kind of boring, I didn’t understand it well. But in the book it is totally different! The story is funny, strange but most of all very original. Lewis Carroll had a beautiful imagination, and made a wonderful story. The story is also for every age, I could read it to my little brother and he would like it, I would like to read it and if I had a grandmother and I’d read it for her, I think she would love it! Another wonderful aspect of the book is that you don’t know what comes next, it really isn’t expectable. All the characters are a bit weird, but they’re funny. The types are well-thought and unusual. But in an positive way! Just in general: I really loved this book and recommend it to everyone!