Alice in Wonderland Paperback – Illustrated, August 1, 2006

The Cheshire Cat. Down the rabbit hole. Mad hatter. Curiouser and curiouser. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!Even if you have never read "Alice in Wonderland," some part of its charmingly nonsensical story has probably slipped into your head over the years. Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy tale is a dreamlike adventure that breezily eschews plot, character development and any kind of logic... and between his cleverly nonsensical writing ("I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror") and surrealist adventures, it is absolutely perfect that way. How many books can say that?A bored young girl named Alice is by a riverbank when a White Rabbit runs by, fretting, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!" and checking the watch from his waistcoat. Unsurprisingly, Alice pursues the rabbit down a rabbit-hole... and ends up floating down a deep tunnel to a strange place full of locked doors. There's also a cake and a little bottle with labels instructing you to eat or drink them, which cause Alice to either shrink or grow exponentially.As she continues pursuing the rabbit (who seems to think she's someone named Mary Ann), Alice quickly discovers that Wonderland is a place where logic and reason have very, very little influence -- talking animals in a Caucus-race, a hookah-smoking Caterpillar, even more bizarre growth potions, a grinning cat, the Duchess and her indestructible pig-baby, eternal tea-time with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter (plus the Dormouse), and finally the court of the Queen and King of Hearts."Alice in Wonderland" is one of those rare books that actually is more enjoyable and readable because it's pure nonsense, without more than a shred of plot or even proper narrative structure. The entire story is essentially Alice wandering from one wacky scenario to another in Wonderland, meeting more violently weird people with every stop and finding herself entangled in all sorts of surreal situations. It doesn't really lead anywhere, or come from anywhere.And yet, this works perfectly -- it's all about nonsense, and a coherent plot or developed characters would get in the way of that. Never has such a perfect depiction of a weird dream been turned into fiction, especially since Alice regards everything that happens with a sort of perplexed detachment. Even though NOTHING in Wonderland makes sense (vanishing cats, talking animals, arguing playing-cards painting roses, the Hatter convinced that it is six o'clock all day every day), she addresses everything with a sense of bemused internal logic ("I've had nothing yet, so I can't take more").And Carroll festoons this wacky little tale with puns ("We called his Tortoise because he taught us"), odd snatches of mutilated poetry ("Twinkle, twinkle, little bat/how I wonder what you're at") and tangled snarls of eccentric logic that only works if you're technically insane (so... flamingoes are like mustard?). This keeps the plotless story as sparkling and swift-moving as a mountain stream laced with LSD, so the mind never has a chance to get bored by Alice simply wandering around, growing and shrinking, and engaged in a string of conversations with loopy people."Alice in Wonderland" is a mad, mad, mad, mad experience -- and between Carroll's sparkling dialogue and enchantingly surreal story, it's also a lot of fun. Never a dull moment... except the wait to read "Through the Looking Glass."

Despite the fact that Alice is a family name in our home, I haven't read the book or seen the movie despite knowing the story. This book is an updated version of the original, and while I'm sure the writing is better than it was in the original, it's still a little challenging to read and understand.The references in this book don't quite make sense to me because it was written in a previous era. Sincerably, the novel is illogical and bizarre, which kind of confuses me. This book's rendition, in my opinion, does a fantastic job of transforming a complicated story into a fun read. Despite this, I found myself reading parts over and over again since I still couldn't understand half of what I was reading.

This edition is beautiful, my daughter loves it

Multiplicity of editions can be frustrating if you want to spend correctly just once. The AmazonClassics edition is a very good edition, almost perfect, it has X-Ray, the original illustrations in a good size, modern typography and a very polished formatting; except one part: there is a beautiful poem/tale, "The Mouse's Tale", in which a mishearing makes Alice to blend tail with tale and the story appears typographically in a quite beautiful shape of a tail, sinuously getting narrower til being as thick as an individual letter. Unfortunately in the AmazonClassics Edition the shape is rather like a sinuous river, it losses its meaning. I checked other kindle edition I have, "Alice in Wonderland: The Complete Collection" edition by Maplewood Books, the illustrations are a bit less clear (at least that was I felt), the formatting, although good, it's not as exemplar as the AmazonClassics Edition but to my tranquility "The Mouse's Tale" is formatted faithful to the original, so I will stick to that complete edition and I won't get the second book, "Through the Looking-Glass," in the AmazonClassics Edition, for fear that it will not express the intentions of the author.Peculiar book. Although built of meaningful blocks of events, as a group they are surreal; if there exists a meaning, is meant for only an initiated in the reasons of the story. For what I read it could be for the amusement of a little girl friend of Lewis Carroll. I love it very much. Weird and all, inscrutable and unfathomable as it is to me at the same time it is exciting and mind blowing. Alice falls into another world, one that changes like a dream but whereas we as actors of our dreams change along them. Instead Alice lives them quite consciously, as one of those old memories of strange events or creatures you saw, in which you are not that sure if it actually happened or, being that fantastic, it was a reverie feed by being in an unfamiliar place.

I knew it was a pocketbook, but the pocketbooks I'm used to are more like mini books. I'm satisfied with the product; it was smaller than expected.

Yes, I hold up my hand and admit that I'm one of those who has seen the 1951 animated Disney motion picture after having been treated to it (on VHS, no less) for one of my birthdays as a child, and now having read the first part of its source material, Disney did a fantastic job of adapting this "nonsense" to the big screen.I do say "nonsense" kindly of course. Does the story make sense? No, not at all, but that's the idea! I've worked with children who were given free rein to write stories and their ideas were usually bonkers and all over the place. That's what made this fun, if perhaps a little frustrating for adult readers in that it doesn't follow a logical sequence of beginning, middle and end. I bet Lewis Carroll had great fun writing it, however.I'd thoroughly recommend the audio book version narrated by Miriam Margolyes, who does a smashing job of narrating it and bringing Carroll's nonsensical characters to life.Kindle Edition: 4/5Audible Edition: 5/5

Bought for myself as I loved thus story as a child. beautiful little commemorative edition of a children's classic story.Beautiful illustrations and text.Platinum edging to the book .Lovely 4 pages at the back giving some brief information about Queen Elizabeth II and her rein.Excellent quality, well packaged. A lovely gift or personal keepsake for anyone who loves the original story with the added extra of information about the Queens Jubilee

Time to read: 2 hoursTime to explain to child what the hell is happening: 3 hoursWhile I appreciate the book was written in a different time, and there are some wonderful passages, on the whole the book is just a lot of old nonsense. Which I think was the point. It was an exercise in frippery, of making something nonsensical.The adaptations of the book do an excellent job of turning this confused half-story into something enjoyable. My daughter enjoyed the fact that she was reading it/having it read to her, but really wasn't grasping much of what was going on.

Be very careful about which version of this book you are buying! I am now 50% into the book (on Kindle) and the "illustrations" do NOT illustrate the text. What you get are a random sequence of quite grainy black and white reproductions of girls and women reading from a book. (See attached photo). I'm pretty sure Alice fans are expecting more than this when the tag clearly states ILLUSTRATED and Unabridged. It has these pictures, but are they truly illustrations?Apart from that the text and story are wonderful. I've never been an Alice fan, really because the terrible movies put me off. So reading it at last is an exciting revelation.

This is not a review of the book's literary merit, just the quality of the particular edition.Quite a few positives on offer here, especially considering the price.The binding is sewn, hooray! This isn’t one of those glued paperbacks masking as a hardback. The book is a reader-friendly size, compact, and the font is easily readable with decent line spacing and wide enough margins from the edge. The paper is cream-coloured but unfortunately a bit see-through (probably my only qualm).The design of the book is very simple and visually pleasing – it shows the publishing company deals with art. The dustjacket managed to highlight Tove Jansson’s artwork instead of stealing the show, and the light green paper the book is bound in creates a perfect contrast with the bright orange endpapers.The entire book is generously illustrated with 11 colour illustration, 3 full-page black and white illustrations, and numerous smaller black and white illustrations on nearly every page. An absolute delight for both the fans of book illustration as such, as well as fans of Tove Jansson’s art in particular. Otherwise, it’s Lewis Carroll’s fans, collectors of beautiful books, and (obviously) children who’re in for a treat with this publication.Given the friendly price, there’s not much reason to hesitate whether to add this one to the personal library as the quality is unusually decent for today’s standards. And the illustrations alone are probably worth it.Reviewing the edition published by Tate Publishing in 2011, illustrated by Tove Jansson, ISBN: 978 1 85437 957 3, priced £9.39 at the time.