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Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
Alice follows a waistcoated rabbit down a hole into a country where sizes will not stay put, the tea party never ends, and the Queen wants heads off.
A story about children and magical creatures, strange and funny in tone. We would put it with children of 8–12, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.
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Our take on this book
Bored on a riverbank, Alice follows a waistcoated white rabbit down a hole and into Wonderland, a country where she grows and shrinks without warning, a caterpillar smokes on a mushroom, a tea party goes on forever, and a furious Queen wants everybody's head off. Lewis Carroll's 1865 masterpiece invented a kind of nonsense that has never been bettered — logical and lunatic at once, stuffed with jokes, riddles and characters that have soaked into the language. It is less a plot than a series of brilliant, dreamlike encounters, which means it rewards a reader who enjoys wordplay and strangeness over straightforward adventure. Nothing in it is truly frightening; the Queen's threats are all bluster. For an eight- to twelve-year-old with a taste for the absurd it is endlessly quotable and quietly clever, though its Victorian language asks a little patience — best met by a confident reader, or shared aloud so the jokes land.
If they like this, try these
Chosen by matching age, reading age, tone and subject — not by what is selling.
The Phantom TollboothNorton Juster
The BFGRoald Dahl
Or let them write their own.
Nothing gets a child reading like a story they invented themselves. Your child plans the characters and the plot, and we write, illustrate and print it as a real book with their name on the cover as the author.
Find another book
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