Proud Mama alert! My 10 year old will be playing the White Rabbit in his school production of "Alice in Wonderland". His school puts on pretty elaborate productions and we are both pretty excited about it. He originally got a smaller part then got bumped up when the girl slated to play Alice moved away. This is extra good news because I have been watching that girl play the lead for the past several years and she is pretty one-note so I am glad to see someone else get a chance to shine, and it benefited my son as well.
Anyhoo, this lead me to seek out the original version of this tale, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, first published in 1865. We recently travelled to Big White ski resort and listened to this on audio book on the way home. I was nervous about the road conditions so I wanted a distraction. The roads ended up being not too bad, and the snow tires that I bought last season were a definite asset as well.
But as for the story, we are all familiar with the basic plot: girl is bored with her humdrum life and follows the white rabbit down his hole into "wonderland". She shrinks and grows, meets colourful characters along the way, only to realize that there's no place like home. Wait that's Oz!
Since I listened to the audio book, I didn't get the benefit of the lovely illustrations but the narrative is quite lovely and descriptive all the same. There is one passage where we are introduced to the Griffin and the narrator tells us to look at the picture if we don't know what a Griffin is. Luckily I named my cat Griffin so I did know, although he was named after the "Party of Five" character and not the mythical creature.
Much like this review, the tale of Alice in Wonderland goes off on many tangents, but overall is a quality tale of fantasy and "wonder". I would recommend giving it a read.
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