As I do every year, I’m reading aloud Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And as I also do every year, I showed my class The Nursery Alice, Lewis Carroll’s cringe-inducing attempt to adapt his story for “Children aged from Nought to Five.” After regaling them with a few choice bits I told them I’d take a stab at The Nursery Harry and so, with apologies to Ms. Rowling, here’s the beginning:
ONCE upon a time, there was a little boy called Harry. Would you like to hear his story?
Well, his parents had died. Isn’t that an awful thing? And so he lived with his relatives, the Dursleys.
Would you like to know how they treated him? Did they give him treats and remember his birthday? Oh, not at all. In fact, they were horrible to him. They made him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. Yes, they did! And kept him a secret from the neighbors. Can you imagine?
Some of my students are trying to do their own Nursery versions of beloved books. Check out this very clever Nursery Golden Compass.
educating alice 