The first book recommendation in a week of ‘Alice’ themed books is Emma Chichester-Clark’s adaptation of the classic tale into a picture book.
Emma now has a cult following thanks to the success of the wonderful Blue Kangaroo series. Anyone who doesn’t fall in love with her books must have a heart of stone. The tales are emotive and the illustrations (also done by Emma) have a really distinctive style with an angular 2D style.
This picture book has been out for a little while but there is added interest at the moment as the new adaptation is released in cinemas Friday 5th March. It’s a longer-than-usual picture book but that’s to be expected with the length of the original tale.
The book contains all the classic characters we know and love and being brunette myself, I fully endorse the portrayal of Alice as a brunette!
I just adore the Alice tale’s, probably more so now than I did when i was younger. This might be down to my growing awareness of the complexity of the prose and the coded subtext. Like many Victorian stories and fairy tales, Alice In wWonderland is a deceptively frightening tale with the possibility of no escape but Emma’s modern update allows chiuldren of a younger age to enjoy Lewis Carroll’s exuberant talent without the prospect of rabbit-hole nightmares.
There are so many editions and interpretations of this tale, I can’t wait to share some different ones with you this week. With so many adaptations available to us for this and indeed, other stories such as Cinderella it might be nice to explore the history of children’s literature and I have a great book with does just that for us, so we don’t have to do all the hard work. Expect information about that tomorrow aswell.
Happy Alice reading, and get ready for a fantastical 3D experience at the cinema. As much as I loathe the fact it’s ANOTHER Tim Burton film with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter AGAIN, it looks to be a spectacular film that suspends our disbelief.
