Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: `Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT’S the great puzzle!’

So Jack read to little Aaron as Kate watched fondly at the start of last night’s LOST episode (or an abridged version thereof — I didn’t recognize the edition of the book). Hmm…maybe Aaron IS Alice? (And isn’t Jack’s dad something Carrollian too?)

Alice Illustrations other than Tenniel - Hugo Strikes Back! I’m not quite clear who Hugo is and why he is striking back but this wiki is incredible — links to more Alice illustrators than I knew existed (many NOT NOT for children — or me, for that matter). Here are just a few of my new and old favorites (of those less familiar to most):

Adrienne Segur

(I saw Lewis Carroll Society Mark Richard’s copy years ago and have dreamed of owning my own ever since.)

Gorohovsky Edward Semyonovich

Josee Bisaillo

Lydia Shulgin

(Has a Peter Sis feel to it, doesn’t it?)

Tove Jansson

(Another I already knew and desperately want.)

Vladislav Erk

和田誠

大友克洋

(The tree makes me think of Ferdinand’s)

One of my favorite teaching units of the year is the Many Faces of Alice unit. I begin by reading the book aloud, have the kids take a close look at the various illustrators, and then ask them to do a project of their own. When Roxanne Feldman came to Dalton she came up with the wonderful idea of putting a complete kid- illustrated version of the book on-line; we did this in 1998 and in 1999.

In 2000 I began having the children do Toy Theater productions. I bought a beautiful toy theater at Pollack’s Toy Theater Museum in London , had the kids create scenery and puppets, a script, and we filmed the results and put them online here, here, here. and here.

Then last year Roxanne came up with a new idea — to have the kids do a sort of book trailer — that is, they’d do a series of drawings and then a voice-over. The result wouldn’t be quite stop-motion animation (as that was way too time-consuming), but no longer a series of still pages either. We didn’t put last year’s version on-line, but this year’s is here on our class blog. Do visit and comment! I’m thrilled with the results and I think the kids are too.

A parent at my school alerted me to a forthcoming film, “Phoebe in Wonderland.” Evidently it is full of references from my favorite book! Here are a few photos of Felicity Huffman (of “Desperate Housewives”) as the Red Queen.

“Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Visit of Alice Liddell Hargreaves to Columbia for the Ceremonies observing Mr. Dodgson’s Birth Centennial,” the spring meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America took place this past Saturday in Columbia University’s Butler Library a scant three blocks from my home.

The meeting being at Columbia, made for something of a full circle for me; you see, I attended my very first Society meeting there a decade ago. We met in an old, dusty classroom (most likely renovated by now), Michael Patrick Hearn* spoke on Tenniel, current president Andrew Sellon presented a lovely theater piece about Carroll, and I first met Leonard S. Marcus who came because he had a new edition of Alice’s Adventures coming out with photographs by Abelardo Morell (highly recommended, by the way).

The following summer I went to an extraordinary centenary programme at Christ Church, Oxford and bonded for life with Carrollians from all over the world. Since then I’ve gone regularly to meetings here in New York and once even zipped over to Toronto for a joint meeting with the Canadian society. When in the U.K. I usually meet up with Mark Richards and others of the British Lewis Carroll Society.

A day before the meeting three remarkably heavy boxes showed up at my building. More Newbery submissions was my first thought until I noticed they all were labeled Dark Horse, a name unfamiliar to me. But not for long. “A kid came by and knew exactly what they were,” the doorman told me. Aha, a comic publisher, I realized! These were the spanking new copies of speaker Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland that I’d volunteered to take over to the meeting. And so early Saturday two Carrollians came over (after breakfasting at Tom’s Restaurant) and together we lugged the books over to Butler where they were snapped up within the hour.

The meeting went beautifully. Our first speaker was Amirouche Moftefi who spoke on “Logical Writings by and About Lewis Carroll.” He was followed by Bryan Talbot who spoke with such passion about his work on Alice in Sunderland. This was the highlight of the meeting for me because Bryan and I are both members of the Yahoo Lewis Carroll Group where he had been keeping us informed about the project for years. I’d seen some of the pages, but to finally meet Bryan, hear him talk about it in such depth, and see the final book was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

I’d invited Betsy Bird to come and so we went off on our own for lunch at Kitchenette Uptown (narrowly escaping the worst of their Saturday brunch lines) and had a grand chat before heading back to get our books signed by Bryan.

The highlight of the afternoon was the dual presentation on annotating by Michael Patrick Hearn and Selwyn Goodacre. It was fascinating. Michael addressed the overall topic of annotating while Selwyn delved into the history of annotating the Alice books in particular. Afterwards they jointly answered a slew of thoughtful questions from the audience.

Next was a screening of the movie Dreamchild. I love. love, love this movie; while definitely a fiction (as the real story is quite different) it is just so lovely. It was filmed at Christ Church, Jim Henson did the puppets for the dream sequences, and it was written by the amazing Dennis Potter. Unfortunately, it is not available on DVD and so I lent them my precious VHS copy to use for the screening. After the formal meeting we all went to a Carrollian’s home for a lovely get together.

Please visit Betsy’s blog for another view of the events including a far more detailed accounting of the morning speakers (as well as a view of the sartorial style of male Society members).

* Michael’s wikipedia entry is not comprehensive by any means, but it gives you a beginning idea of what he has done if not, by any means, all.

I had the good fortune to hear and meet Russian translator Nina Demurova at a meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America some time ago where she had available some rare editions of her translation of Alice Through the Looking-Glass illustrated by U. Varchenko. Now my collection contains one of these gems signed to me personally by Nina. (The companion Alice’s Adventures is even more gorgeous, but even more rare.) And so I was absolutely delighted today to see this article on the story as to how Alice came to Russia with much help from Nina.

Dear Alice,

Your visit this year was excellent as always. My students appreciated enormously the wit and wisdom of your story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Only one had actually read you before; the rest knew you vaguely from the Disney movie or books thereof. The one who had read you hadn’t especially liked the experience, expecting an adventure more of the Harry Potter sort, no doubt. However, this time she had a blast!

Knowing of my obsession with you, my class was eager to get going. As always I read you from The Annotated Alice, slipping in context as necessary, say some of the original poetry that Carroll parodies in his verse. For example, “How doth the Little Crocodile” is a parody of Isaac Watt’s didactic poem, “How doth the Little Bee” which the original child audience would have known well. I also brought in some of the story behind the story — that of the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s real name) at Christ Church College in Oxford and his telling of the story to Alice Liddell and her two sisters. Lots of fun references to Oxford and the girls’ real life are sprinkle throughout.

I read it to them while they followed along in a variety of illustrated editions. They enjoyed Carroll’s own illustrations, those of John Tenniel (the illustrator of the first published edition), Arthur Rackham’s, Peter Newell’s, Angel Dominguez’s, Helen Oxenbury’s, and Alison Jay’s to name a few of their favorites. I also showed them Robert Sabuda’s pop-up and read to them Whoopie Goldberg’s variant, Alice.

Before starting you, I showed the kids The 1900 House, a reality show where a family had to live for three months as in 1900 London. The kids loved it and I think it gave them some sense of what life might have been like for Alice, some thirty-five years earlier. And then, during the week or two that I was reading you, I also showed the kids the BBC production of The Young Visiters, sort of Victorian/sort of Edwardian I think, with a similar bizarre sensiblity to your story. Most recently, in preparation for our project, I showed them a pretty dreadful version from 1985 (of which they were most fascinated by Ringo Starr as the Mock Turtle while I was fascinated to noticed that the screenplay was by Paul Zindel). With the latter, I wanted them to pay attention to the different screen shots, especially with chapters like “A Mad Tea-Party” which can seem all talk and no action. After our spring break I plan to introduce them to our anime-ish project, pairing them up to create small movies for each chapter. We’ll post them on our class blog and I’d very much like to put them on youtube too. (I’m really into youtube as a teaching resource. Yesterday, after finishing the movie some of the kids and I commented that the girl playing Alice looked a bit like Shirley Temple. I then went to youtube and found several clips so they could see what she was like exactly.)

I feel as if I could practically recite you, I’ve read you aloud so many times. Because of this I do notice that your creator does over use the words curious and melancholy, but that’s okay. His book and yours is still as fresh today as it was when my father first read it to me eons ago.

Thanks again for another wonderful time together. Can’t wait to do it again!

Fondly,

Monica

Fuse#8 — How could you do this to me: mentioning Alice in Wonderland in your inaugural Video Sunday!? To Educating Alice-Carrollian-Me? And so here I am, two hours later, coming up for air from my own investigation of Alice on Youtube.

But first, a (not so) little background. Just as with every and anything, there are Carrollians (Lewis Carroll obsessives) who collect and know all there is to know about the films of Alice in Wonderland (the book title is really Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but I’m not fussy). And so, at meetings held by the various Lewis Carroll societies over the years, folks have discussed and shown many of these films. Here’s a good list of films at the Lewis Carroll website. And I’ve just come across a list of films screened at the Animating Alice Film Festival of a few years back in the U.K.

And speaking of such events, the next meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America will be here in NYC at Columbia University on April 14th for anyone interested in getting a taste of what a literary society meeting is like. I’ve just found out from graphic novelist Bryan Talbot that he will be presenting. He’s the creator of The Tale of One Bad Rat and has been working for years on Alice in Sunderland which, I believe, will be out in the US by then. I will definitely be there. (My first LCSNA meeting was at Columbia so I like that it is there again. That I live nearby doesn’t hurt either. Um…Fuse…so do you, wanna come?)

Getting back to youtube, Fuse features a scene from the star studded 1933 Paramount film. This film is much talked about in Carroll circles, but I only recently finally saw it, thanks to the grandparents of a student who had been alert enough to tape it when it was on television (which must have been on some obscure channel at 2 AM as I never saw it!). And it is one oddity, I can tell you. The effects are incredibly cheesy for a film of its time (made a few years before MGM’s Wizard of Oz), especially given the cast. In addition to Gary Cooper as the White Knight, you’ve got Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle and W. C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty.

Another well-known version is Jan Svankmajer’s. It is available on DVD, but is way too creepy for my fourth graders. Here’s how it starts. And here’s another clip. And another. And still another one.

Then there is the really cool Jonathan Miller BBC version from 1966 with all the great actors of the day — Peter Sellers, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave and music by Ravi Shankar. Most Carrollians love it, but while not as creepy as Svankmajer’s, I don’t think it is particularly appealing to kids. Here’s a clip.

I’ve always kicked myself for not waiting in line at the Public Theater way back in 1981 to see Liz Swados’ production with none other than Meryl Streep (yes, really!) as Alice. Here’s a clip (from the DVD which is available for purchase and quite fun — I did show it to my class last year).

One not on youtube is Dennis Potter’s Dreamchild. I adore this movie which was filmed in Oxford and has some very cool dream sequences with Henson puppets. Many Carrollians don’t feel as I do, understandably, because Potter does play fast and loose with the biographical details, in particular the relationship between Carroll and the Liddell family (of which Alice is the child to whom the stories were first told).

Here are a few more clips that I found this morning:

Alice in Wonderland Jello TV Commercial 1954

Alice in Rexall-Land Commercial

Betty Boop in Blunderland

Louis Vuitton Japanese Commercial

Miyuki Chan in Wonderland (This clip seems to be an anime with French subtitles and the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” dubbed over it. A little googling and I found out that this was evidently a manga series first.)

Brooke Shields as Alice on The Muppet Show

One of Disney’s 1923 Alice’s Wonderland series. (This, by the way, is such a cool series. Most of them are on the Disney Rarities DVD.)

Youtube is also full of clips from the Disney version (which I quite like) and various live-action versions of the last few decades (which I pretty much don’t like). These include William Sterling’s version from 1972 featuring Dudley Moore as the Dormouse, a film of a Broadway production featuring Richard Burton (and Nathan Lane as Fuse discovered), the 1985 television production (with all sorts of stars including, ahem, Ringo Starr as the Mock Turtle), and the one with Whoopie Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat.

Yesterday I saw Guillermo del Toro’s film PAN’S LABYRINTH. In front of me in the ticket buying line were a group of older women, one of whom began talking about beginning to read and then quitting HIS DARK MATERIALS in preparation for a religious lecture/discussion on the series versus Lewis’s. “It starts with a girl falling asleep in a wardrobe and she is still asleep in the third book.” she said with a little smile. Then she held forth on the religious themes of HDM, at least those she had heard of it — the fall, the daemons, angels — pretty much all completely wrong, but she had her companions totally interested.

As for PAN’S LABYRINTH, it is quite something. Young Ofelia travels to an isolated area with her pregnant mother to join her stepfather, a captain fighting the rebels in 1944 fascist Spain. Ofelia like Lyra is on the cusp of adolescence, a child who seems to try to lose herself in fairy tale books — at the very start her mother tells her she is getting too old for them, that they are not real life.

Her mother is right; they aren’t real life. But they might be something else. Right away Ofelia encounters a fairy and soon is deeply involved in a fairy realm where she is evidently a lost princess. At one point a housekeeper in the real world of her stepfather’s military outpost gives her a dress and pinafore for a special party. When Ofelia heads off to the fairy realm, down, down, down — she looks exactly (consciously I’m guessing) like Alice.

As scary as that fairy realm is, the real world of fascist Spain is much, much worse. The film’s most graphic scenes of violence are of torture, maiming, killing and more in that real world. The stepfather is a complete sadist, the mother dies (of course), there is a baby brother for Ofelia to save (she does at great expense), a helper in the guise of a housekeeper who is there as a spy for the partisans, and so on. Ofelia goes off on a classic fairy tale quest — first to save her mother and then her brother.

I left the theater thinking it was too hard a film for me to watch — too violent. However, the more I think about it the more I’m glad I saw it. This is not really a Bettelheim view of fairy tales, but something more complex and original. And so I do recommend it with a warning that if you are not good with graphic violence prepare yourself — it is telegraphed ahead of time so you can turn your head away (or, as I did, cover your eyes so you can just read the subtitles without seeing what is happening above them).