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Woot!  I’ve scraped and saved and slavered and after a couple weeks have culled together enough videos to constitute a truly lovely Video Sunday.  And since Halloween is near upon us (a holiday I will, strangely enough, be spending at an outside wedding in Maine) why not begin with the king of frightening children’s literature himself, Stephen Gammell.  Mental Floss recently released a post called 14 Terrifying Facts About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  Fine and good but the link to the documentary caught my particular eye . . .

Scary Stories (Official Trailer) from Cody Meirick on Vimeo.

As did the video they linked to showing how illustrator Stephen Gammell does his art.  Pretty amazing to see in process.

This next one’s a hoot. Author Steve Sheinkin, when he isn’t creating a comic styled interview series or writing National Book Award short list nominees is, apparently, doing some killer LEGO book trailers as well. Check this out. And since it features Nixon, yes indeed there is some slightly salty language.

Another book trailer, and this time for a book that I certainly hope will be getting some awards soon. The Martin Scorsese blurb is a nice touch.

That tune just slays me.

This next one is timed nicely with the Alice in Wonderland 150th anniversary.  It discusses Alice Hargreaves (the real Alice)’s trip to Columbia University in the 30s and has some very nice interviews with some of today’s Alice experts. It mentions things like a picture of Alice that was published in Punch before the book was officially published.  Be sure to get to the part where you can hear the real Alice’s voice.

For more information, just go here.

Writing parodies come.  Writing parodies go.  But writing parodies where the singer is thoroughly easy on the ears and parodies one of my favorite songs?  That’s just gravy.  As such . . .

Thanks to Watch. Connect. Read. for the link.

• I mention to folks that in my new job I actually don’t work day-to-day with children’s books all that often anymore and they wonder how I’m coping.  As it happens, I’m just ducky.  Since my spare hours are just as chock full of kidlit as before, I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing too much.  I still read my reviews and get my galleys.  But occasionally something will be published and I’ll be hit by an overpowering wave of self-pity.  This week’s, “Why Didn’t I See That?!” kvetch-fest?  Peanuts: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz by Charles M. Schulz, illustrated by Matt Groening, Raina Telgemeier, and Jeffrey Brown amongst MANY others. And it’s a 2015 title at that.  Waaaaaaaant.

• Meanwhile, another very cool looking book was recently released.  Jules at the Kirkus version of 7-Imp has the skinny on The Complete Alice a.k.a. what you can get me for Christmas.

• I think I could be happy if I just spent the rest of my life reading snarky reviews of that darn rabbit book. First there was Travis.  Then Roger.  And yes, I know that the more we talk about the bunny monstrosity the more time it will take before it goes away.  But we have such a lovely literary community there of mutual appreciation that when we are actually allowed to dislike something, it has a tendency to go to our heads.  Wascally wabbit.

• Sure, they’re a mammoth publishing entity of massive production and countless staff but . . . awww. Look what Harper Collins did for Harold’s birthday.  Ain’t it sweet?

Hmm. Sounds good at first. The headline reads, “Tired of stereotypical characters in books for girls, this dad wrote his own.”  Then it shows a book of various professions helmed by women in an abecedarian fashion.  It’s no Rad American Women A to Z but it’ll do.  Except . . . when you get to “L”.  I don’t generally get all hot under the collar when folks stereotype my profession, but COME ON, MAN.  Shoot, it’s images like that that kept me out of the profession in the first place.

• File this one away in the It Isn’t Just Me drawer.  Some of you may be aware that before I post an episode of Fuse #8 TV, a series where I interview authors and illustrators in a free and easy manner, I always begin with a bit of “Reading (Too Much Into) Picture Books”.  This is a series where I acknowledge (without actually saying outright) that when a parent reads a picture book too many times to a small child, they start to conjure up some pretty crazy theories about the text.  Well, thanks in large part to a recent New Yorker profile of Sandra Boynton by Ian Bogost, I see that I am not alone.  I’m actually in awe of his take on But Not the Hippopotamus.  The North America vs. Africa vs. Central America theory?  Brilliant!  By the way, my most ambitious re-interpretation will preface my Fuse #8 TV episode this coming Thursday.  Be prepared for a truly wacky one.

• Okay. That’s it. No one’s allowed to quit their blogs anymore.  I like the blogs that I like.  I may not check them every day but I like the reliability of visiting them and seeing something new.  And I get very sad indeed when the best ones fall by the wayside.  I mean, let’s say someone walked up to you and asked, “What’s the best children’s literature blog where real kids review real books . . . and it’s fun to read?”  You would answer without hesitation (if you were me, that is), “Aaron Zenz’s Bookie Woogie blog, of course!”  Well, here’s the thing.  The blog?  It’s had a nice run.  Seven years worth, in fact.  And now it’s done.  Over.  Kaputski.  And we’re all just a little bit sadder today. *sigh*

• Me Stuff: First off, I want to bow down low and thank profusely all the folks who came out for my joint SCBWI-IL/Center for Teaching through Children’s Books welcoming party last week.  It was, without a doubt, the BEST welcome party I have ever had, bar none.  I even signed someone’s cookie (that’s a first!).  If you live in the Chicago area and missed it, never fear.  You could come on out to EPL and see me present on the topic of picture books rather soon.  Yes, the very kind and talented Brian Wilson has allowed me to join him on his annual Best Picture Books Presentation.  I’ll get to talk about some of my too little lauded favorites of 2015, which is just a joy.  Finally, Chicago Magazine interviewed me recently.  They’re using the same photo from my Chicago Tribune interview, which is confusing, but the talk is entirely different.  It was awfully fun to do too.

• In my interview I actually mention The Guinness Book of World Records a fair amount.  Rather appropriate since I recently learned that the book Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table has been selected by the Points of Light Foundation as the book to break Guinness World Record for the number of children being read to in a 24-hour period. Part of the Foundation’s “Read Across the Globe” initiative to raise awareness on the global literacy crisis, volunteers all over the world will read the book next Monday, October 19. Here’s a news article and a tv news report that say more about it.  Thanks to Philip Lee for the links.

• Did you see?  They’re releasing Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman.  Wouldn’t be particularly notable aside from the fact that it’s always nice to see diverse books back in print . . . except something’s a bit different from the last time it was printed.  Did you notice what it was?  Debbie Reese most certainly did.

• In case you missed it (like me) there was a new brouhaha last week.  This time it involved author Meg Rosoff.  There’s a recap over at Reading While White which breaks it down.  Aren’t recaps great?  There should be more of them out there these days.

• Each year I try to write a review of at least one self-published book.  It can be a tricky affair since so many of them make common missteps.  That’s why I really appreciated the ShelfTalker piece When a Self-Published Book Is Done Right.  There really are some great ones out there.  Finding them is often the struggle, but when they work, they work.

• By the way, I just want to give a shout out to The Curious Reader Store over in Glen Rock, NJ.  My buddy Tucker Stone was recently there and he mentioned that they had a particular love for Wild Things there.  Thanks, guys (but particularly Sally)! We do appreciate it.

• Daily Image:

The title of this piece is 15+ Book-Inspired Pieces Of Jewelry For Bookworms, which you’ll see is a bit of a stretch. Still and all, I do like these Labyrinth earrings:

Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.  So MUCH very very good stuff to show you today.  Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.  Hrm. Howzabout we begin with one of my favorite tropes: things that parody other things that you’ve never seen. It was Dana Sheridan who directed my attention to this video about The Queen of Hearts from an Alice ballet. A lot of time is spent explaining how one of her dances parodies a very specific dance from Sleeping Beauty. All I know is that we need more funny ballets in this world. Preferably based on children’s books in some manner.

Thanks to Dana Sheridan for the link.

In the book trailer world I came across this little trailer for Hilo.  I liked Hilo quite a bit and the animated portions of this video simple sweeten the pot.

And well . . . come on. It’s the viral video of the week. You don’t think I’d let this one go, do you? It’s practically the whole reason I’m doing a Video Sunday today. What I like to do is look at the book covers the kid’s being read. Lots of Margaret Wise Brown in there, but a nice shot of Global Babies and other beloved contemporary favs as well. Bravo, parents!

Me stuff and it’s audio, not video, but eh. Life’s short.  I was asked to speak with Chicago’s radio station WGN on Friday evening, so I did so about pretty much all things children’s literature.  Now I’ll admit right now that I should have made a better point about how picture books have a higher reading level than easy books and that reading them as an older kid is totally legitimate.  That’s the problem with live radio.  It just goes too fast.  But Justin Kaufmann was an awesome host and we had a great time with the yakkety yak.  In case you’re curious, the link is here.

So full credit where credit is due to Travis Jonker for locating this remarkable Wall Street Journal interview with Brian Selznick about how his drawings become a book like The Marvels.  Brief it may be, but worth your time and attention.

Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

Okay.  The off-topic video.  I want to pay tribute to my new town.  And what better way to do so than to show you this truly dated and WONDERFUL history of Evanston, IL.  For fun, just skip to the section on “Evanston Today” at 12:10, sit back, and just soak it in.  Soak. It. In.

Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is turning 150 and to celebrate, notebook maker Moleskine has created a limited edition notebook collection.

Moleskine worked with The British Library to incorporate original artwork into the notebook series. There are four different covers, which include reproductions of original drawings by John Tenniel, the artist who drew Alice.  And inside the cover of these notebooks, readers will find a page from Carroll’s original handwritten manuscript.

To promote the new series, Moleskine collaborated with Dutch paper cut artist Rogier Wieland to make a short video down the rabbit hole. Check it out after the jump.

(Thanks to Michael Patrick Hearn)

I am just back from participating in  FILIJ, Mexico’s International Fair of Children and Youth Book and I am just floored by the experience. Run by Conaculta, Mexico’s governmental agency for the arts, it is BEA, ALA, NCTE, and the National Book Festival all in one glorious ten day event with over 300,000 people attending.  You can get a taste in this photo gallery. They (this is translated by google so is probably not too great) wish:

to encourage the habit of reading among children and young people of Mexico; and bring together publishers, booksellers, distributors, librarians, teachers and specialists, in order to raise the quality and quantity of publications circulating in the Mexican market. Also aims to compare experiences, promote exchange with other countries and bring the public to national and international issues.

The festival was a vibrant place of tents full of books to see and buy, entertainments such as rock concerts and puppet shows, and tons of children and people eagerly enjoying books and stories. Among the events for professionals are a National Meeting for Booksellers (and, yes, the photo is of Laura Vaccaro Seeger and Neal Porter who participated last year), a National Conference of Librarians, an International Seminar (for 600 participants:) on the Promotion of Reading, and 5 hour Master Classes on Writing and Illustration.  There were also school visits, all sorts of performances (just wandering around I saw a puppet show and a rock concert), and a huge area of workshops for children. You can get a taste of the magnitude of the festival by looking at this brochure that includes a map of the festival as well as a listing of all the publishers and a schedule of events.

Even before I got to the festival grounds I had an inkling that this was a big event for all, seeing this poster for it in the city center:

And once at the fair grounds I just enjoyed the energy. I was there only on weekdays, but am told you can barely move on the weekends.

 (There were so many tents full of books! This may look empty, but it is not. Just liked the Peppa painting on this particular tent.)

(This was a rock concert.)

(This was a lovely cafe, but I’m afraid the warm orange of the walls came out rather dark in this photo of mine. In the back you can see one of the delightful posters that were all around the place. I believe there was a contest to get the commission to do these posters.)

Outside the festival,  I did a presentation on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to an attentive group of fourth graders at the Colegio Heraldos de México. They had prepared for my visit by watching both the Disney and Tim Burton’s movies, prepared questions, and created drawings and other decorations for my visit. The children’s English was fabulous — they seemed to follow my presentation with easy and asked thoughtful and carefully constructed questions. At the end I was surprised when they all wanted me to sign copies of Alice in Wonderland, personal autograph books, and paper.  So I did so as Lewis Carroll’s proxy! And then they gave me gifts — mostly chocolate, but also a book, and an amazing folk art clay statue of the Virgin Mary. They had never had an author visit before so it was a very big deal. For me too! My thanks especially to the Mexican Macmillan folk (among them Renato Aranda and Mariana Mendia – a fellow Alice fan ) who took care of everything beautifully.

Afterwards we went to the Museo Frida Kahlo (La Casa Azul where I’d first been years ago) and then to a fabulous lunch on the Coyoacan Zocalo. I was moved by the candles for the 43 slain students, one of the many observations and demonstrations I saw while in Mexico City.

We were also in Coyoacan one of the nights for a lovely dinner with local authors and publishing folk. While walking about we stopped at the Centro Cultural Eleno Garro, a fabulous bookstore in an historic building with trees inside and flying lit books in the children’s section.

My talk for the symposium, also on Alice, went very well. The 600 listeners were generous, attentive, and had some excellent questions. I had observed one of my fellow presenters, illustrator Serge Bloch, a few days before so was prepared for the experience of simultaneous translation, especially when the audience reacted a few beats late to anything amusing. This is a shot from the auditorium during Serge’s presentation which will give a taste of what mine looked like.

 Over the week I was there I met so many interesting people (a complete list of speakers is here) and especially enjoyed chatting with Bart Moeyaert, Serge Bloch, and Gonzola Frasca. And then there were my follow-English speakers, the Australian writer John Marsden with his wife Chris, and the UK Chicken House publisher (and Harry Potter editor)  Barry Cunningham.  We spent our final day together visiting Teotihuacan and then enjoying a lovely leisurely lunch that included ant eggs and crickets. Quite tasty, I should say though I admit found it hard to put aside my cultural squeamishness.

My great thanks to Conculta for inviting me. Most of all my great, great thanks to Karen Coeman who put the whole thing together — she even showed up at 6 AM yesterday at our hotel to be sure we all made it off to the airport without difficulty. Her team included the fabulous Diego Sanchez Moreno and Orly Rosales as well as a committed and helpful group of volunteers who took care of everything for us.

I admit to a particular fondness for subversive books and so Betsy Bird, Julie Danielson, Peter Sieruta’s Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature would have been right up my alley even if I hadn’t known the three authors long before the book came into being. And so I was pleased as punch when Betsy and Jules invited me to answer a few questions about someone who created my favorite subversive book, Lewis Carroll.

We know that you’ve done a fair amount of research on Alice in Wonderland in your spare time so let’s find out some stories folks might not know very well.  In fact, let’s start at the very beginning.  Lewis Carroll.  We know that name was a pen name and that he had a penchant for early photography.  What don’t we tend to know about him?

The mythology around the creation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland centers on Carroll’s friendship with the real Alice Liddell and her two sisters. What has been completely overlooked is that the girls had an older brother, Harry, who was also one of Carroll’s good friends. The children of the head of the Oxford college where Carroll was a mathematics instructor, it was the nine-year-old Harry who Carroll befriended originally. He took Harry boating, tutored him in math, to chapel, and so on. The friendship was reciprocated in spades; Harry was known to follow the young man around like an eager puppy. However, he soon went off to boarding school as was typical for boys of his time and class leaving behind his three sisters who were educated at home by a governess. And so it was that Alice and her two sisters became the most famous of Carroll’s many child friends with Harry quite forgotten.

The relationship between Alice and Carroll has been the source of much speculation.  Few people pause to wonder what happened to her when she grew up, though.  What did she do with her life?

It seems to have been typical of her time and class. At age twenty-eight she married Reginald Hargreaves in Westminster Abbey and had three sons, one of whom she named Caryl. While she always denied it you have to wonder if she was being subversive and was indeed naming him after Carroll. In 1932 for the centenary of Carroll’s birth she traveled to New York City where Columbia University gave her an honorary doctorate.  A delightful and completely fictional imagining of this event is Dennis Potter’s movie  Dreamchild.

It’s hard to picture the book without also picturing the original illustrations.  Are there any stories there?

The first edition of the book came out in July 1865, but was recalled when Tenniel informed Carroll that he was unhappy with the print quality of the illustrations. So the books were recalled and all who had received presentation copies were asked to return them. The rejected copies were sent to hospitals and other institutions. The handful that exist today are the most desired by collectors and the most expensive. After illustrating Looking-Glass Tenniel declined to illustrated any more of Carroll’s work leading many to suspect the relationship between the two had been a difficult one, but who knows?

Various adaptations of the Alice books have made their way into television shows and feature films.  What’s your favorite Alice adaptation?

I’m still waiting for a completely successful one. So far I’ve liked parts of different ones, but I don’t think any work completely. One that I think actually does a lot quite well is Disney. I dislike his framing story — especially the end with the frightened Alice running back home as the book Alice is not fearful at all. However, many scenes are just wonderful, say the Walrus and the Carpenter.

I get a kick out of Betty Boop in Blunderland.

And I also quite like Alice at the Palace perhaps because Alice is played and sung by Meryl Streep!

But I’m still waiting for a great one.

Is there anything else about the book that you think folks are generally unaware of?

Just that it is a really fun and whimsical book and has an unfortunate reputation as being unduly dark. What it is is deeply subversive, especially for the original Victorian child readers. He makes great fun of so many aspects of their lives, say the didactic poetry they had to recite — the poems in the books are mostly parodies of dreadfully instructive ones Victorian children had to memorize and recite —  as well as what they had to learn and how they had to behave. He respected children enormously and it comes through in the books. I urge people who have been dubious about the appeal of the book for children today to give it another look. Kids who go for other subversive books (Lemony Snicket’s come to mine) and/or those that play with language are really going to like these given the chance.

I started out wanting to be a children’s book illustrator. As a child I was celebrated for my art work, starting in high school I began creating my own illustrations for some of my favorite books and stories, and in college I was an art major, focusing on printmaking. At that time the most scathing criticism was that your work looked  “illustrationy.” And so I did beautiful minimalist engravings and etchings in class and did my illustrations at home, careful to not let anyone in my printmaking world know about them, especially not the instructors — renowned artists themselves — whom I admired tremendously.

From college I went right to Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps Volunteer. There I taught for a year and then worked as an illustrator for NGOs, creating various educational materials. My biggest project was to create illustrations for a multi-media presentation on bridge and road repair. I learned how to deal with cement, how to fix a hanging bridge, and so much more. I did posters on scabies, on breast feeding, on malaria prevention.  And at home I worked on illustrations for Kipling’s “The Elephant’s Child”, inspired by the gorgeous flora and fauna all around me.

When I returned to the US I considered an MFA in printmaking, but the lack of personal encouragement from my former instructors decided me — I’d stop feeling guilty about my illustration work and focus on that. And so I put together a portfolio and made the rounds (while also working full time as a teacher — I wasn’t brave enough to go free-lance full-time and, besides, I loved teaching).  I taught the legendary editor Janet Schulman’s daughter and she kindly looked at my portfolio, but we both agreed my work was too austere for her books. At Harpers  they held on to my portfolio for a while, but then suggested I do some things to make my art a little too cute for my taste. There were a couple of agents too, but nothing came of it.

Perhaps because of greater recognition for my teaching, work in early educational computing, and critical writing, I lost interest in illustrating. My final work is from 1998 when I had the idea of creating an edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that would be visually annotated for children.  That is, it would have loads of small Richard-Scarry-like-drawings that would help young readers understand the text, even the more antiquated passages.  And then Roxanne Feldman (aka fairrosa) whom I’d met online came to my school.  A savvy web designer, when I asked her if we could put a few of the kids’ drawings of Alice online she said “sure” and ended up putting the whole book online –  the first two and a half chapters illustrated by me and the rest by my 4th grade students. Sadly, a couple of years ago the school reorganized their servers and it is no longer online.

It is rare these days that anyone sees my work (or even knows about it) other than my “Elephant’s Child” illustrations as they are framed and sit over my couch right next to Robert Byrd’s original cover art for Africa is My Home.  Then last night  thinking about my current book project which involves making Alice accessible to young readers today, I remembered those Alice illustrations of mine.  And while I have no wish to continue that project (my focus is on writing now), I thought it might be fun to put them back online for others to see. Perhaps I will, at some point, put up some of my other old illustrations — I did some for Tolkien, L’Engle, and a whole bunch of folk and fairy tales. Meanwhile, if you want to see my efforts at Alice please go here.

Lou Bunin did a fabulous stop motion Alice in Wonderland film in 1949.  I’ve heard so much about it, but seeing it in total seems to be elusive. (Evidently Disney had a hand in this, wanting his version to be the movie version.) The clip below gives you a taste of why we Carrollians are so eager to get our hands on it. ( This young woman found a French subtitled version — scroll down to see it— that, she indicates, is not complete.)

It is certainly no secret that I am a fan of Lewis Carroll.  And so one of the fun things for a Carroll fan is to attend the occasional meeting of one of the literary societies focused on him.  I’ve been to several hosted by the UK, US, and Canadian organizations, the most recent being the Lewis Carroll Society of North America‘s meeting in NYC this past Saturday.

Now the meetings can be quite varied, often reflecting the locale, the president’s preferences, and more.  For instance, I’ve never been able to make it to one of the West Coast meetings (due to school schedules), but I always have salivated at the agenda as they often avail themselves of movie making and some of the wonderful collections that are there. Here in NYC we often meet at NYU’s Fales Library which has some terrific Lewis Carroll material, but this time we were at the NYIT thanks to one of our members who is the president of the institution.

I hadn’t been to a meeting in a few years and so I really enjoyed reconnecting with old friends at this one. While I had been to a couple of meetings before it was at the 1998 celebration at Christ Church in Oxford that I really bonded with a number of fellow Carroll enthusiasts.

The meeting opened with an interesting panel of the society’s founding members including Morton Cohen, Edward Guiliano,Michael Patrick Hearn, David Schaefer, and Justin Schiller.  I found the contrast to the Oz Club to be especially interesting. (Justin started that organization when very young and Michael has been very involved with it too).

Craig Yoe‘s presentation  on his new book Alice in ComicLand was great fun as is the book (and Craig himself). The selections performed from Bruce Lazarus’ Carrolling project were lovely and clever all at once.  I also enjoyed very much Chris Morgan on Carroll’s games and puzzles. He alerted me to some great online resources, notably celebration of the mind,  futility closet and martin-gardner.org.

Poet Jessica Young spoke about her book, Alice’s Sister and we Carroll fanatics were amused that she was under the misapprehension that Alice Liddell had a sister named Mary.  We were very entertained by April Lynn James/Madison Hatta’s performance of excerpts from  her “The Twinkle Bat Variations,” intrigued by Mike Schneider’s presentation of The Wordless Alice Project, and tickled by Tim Manley’s Alice in Tumblr-land.

All in all, a very good meeting and day.

We began by meeting Mark and Catherine Richards, old friends who lead the UK Lewis Carroll Society, and spent some time in and around Christ Church. Mark spoke to the bulldog (the Oxford security guard complete with bowler hat) at Tom Tower, the main entrance to the college, about going in to look for someone Mark knew there.  We were advised to wait until the college was open to the public at 2 and so wandered over to Christ Church Meadow.  I had fun looking for my room in Meadow Quad as it had overlooked the meadow and we all were absolutely gobsmacked at the massive lines waiting to get into the college. Huge tour groups of kids — hundreds and hundreds. Presumably all due to the first couple of Harry Potter movies having been filmed there.

Finally we went in the non-public way and walked about revisiting various places: the chapel, the door to the deanery (where I’d been with Catherine in 98), Carroll’s rooms at various points, the library, and the hall.  I remembered so well the Buttery where we had before-dinner drinks.  Here I am with the Richards  in the hall (which was packed):

We then met up with Mark Davies who took Tyner and me on a lovely bus ride to a spot in the country (while the Richards walked there) where we walked about a bit and then boarded a boat and headed back on the Thames to Oxford. Mark is an expert on Carroll, Alice, and the Thames and it was a glorious ride as he pointed out relevant points along the way. It was also just fascinating in terms of locks, canal boats (Mark pointed out the one he lives in), and more.  We ended the day with a lovely dinner at a restaurant at Folly Bridge. I mark this day (a la Carroll) with a white stone.

Here are few rough photos I took (blurry as they were through the boat cover — it was a bit brisk!)

The ruins of a nunnery.

Godstow where Carroll first told the Alice story to the three Liddell girls.

One of many canal boats we saw.

A lock — is opened and closed by pushing and pulling as has been the case for centuries.

I’m off on a play/work jaunt to the UK later today.

First stop is Oxford to do some research for my new Alice project.* I’ve visited many times, the most memorable being a magical week in 1998 at Christ Church, celebrating Lewis Carroll’s centenary. Ever since I’ve avoided the inside of the college, wanting to keep pure my memories of that wonderful time: living in Meadow Quad, extraordinary meals at the Hall, champaign at sunset, late night port, the Deanery Garden, and much more. Now I do need to revisit places related to the Alice story and am fortunate that my return to the college will be with Mark and Catherine Richards of the Lewis Carroll Society who organized that 1998 event (and  just may have provided that port.) And then something very special (thanks to Philip Pullman who put us in touch with each other): a boat journey with Mark Davies, author of Alice in Waterland: Lewis Carroll and the River Thames in Oxford.

Next will be London. I’m traveling with a young colleague who has never been to the UK before so I’ve been having fun thinking of my favorite things to do with her. Our plans include the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical, the Charles Dickens Museum, the Cheshire Cheese Pub,  tea in Kensington Gardens, visiting the Richards and seeing their extraordinary Carroll collection, catching up with Joan Aiken’s daughter Lizza (whom I also visited last year), having dinner in the V & A’s gorgeous Morris rooms where their cafe is located. Oh and seeing stuff there (say this special exhibit on Beatrix Potter’s sketches of a beautiful waistcoat). This visit is a little bittersweet as I will not, for the first time, be going to Swain’s Lane in Highgate to see my cousin Lotte Passer who passed away earlier this year at the age of 99. (Do read this Guardian obituary — she was an extraordinary woman who was instrumental in getting my mother and her family out of German in 1939 as well as many others.)

Our final stop will be Edinburgh where I’ve never been.  I’m very excited to see this city that is always so enthusiastically praised and because of the festivals that will all be going on. Thanks to the press office at the book festival I will be doing this and this and will be reporting back about both for sure.

I may or may not post while en route, otherwise, see you when I get back!

*As many who read this blog know, I’m obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. Every year I read it aloud; for a taste of last year’s students’ enthusiastic responses check out their book trailers. Providing context is key; I tell them a lot about Oxford and the life of the real Alice and her siblings, read some of the original poetry Carroll parodies, oversee an indoor croquet game, organize a caucus race (complete with confit-like prizes for all), and attempt a quadrille. Wanting to somewhat replicate this experience in book-form, I’m exploring doing so from the point of view of the Liddell children (among them the well-known Alice and the almost completely overlooked brother, Harry).

I love today’s Nerdy Book Club post, Melissa Williamson’s “Tales of Adoration $ Appreciation.”  In it, Melissa describes her passion for Edgar Allen Poe and how she successfully communicated that passion to her students.  While as teachers we want to encourage our students to find their own passions as readers I feel there is a place to also model and share ours with them just as Melissa did with her students. She used her own enthusiasm, comics, visuals, public speaking, and more to excite her own students with the work of this classical writer.

I do something similar with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That is, through my excitement and the activities I do, my students become as infatuated with that book as I am. I read aloud the book, stopping along the way for my class to try out a quadrille, play a bit of indoor croquet, and explore various logic and mathematical tricks along the way.  And we always end with a project. For  years it was a new kid-illustrated and annotated version, then we did toy theater puppet shows, and last year we did book trailers.

I encourage other teachers to do this as well.  What may appear old and tired can come alive with the personal passion of a creative and talented teacher!

#31 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
58 points

A full out absurdist assault at the arbitrary nature of language, Carroll challenges everything about the way we speak and write, from homonyms to idioms. When people talk about children’s movies and books being entertaining for both kids and adults, they usually mean that there are jokes that are way over the heads of the child audience that adults will find funny. The beauty of this novel is that the same exact jokes are equally entertaining to children and adults, often for the same reason, although in some cases adults may understand more clearly why they are funny. It is almost impossible to believe that this novel was written almost 150 years ago, as it remains one of the truly brilliant, and accessible pieces of children’s literature. – Mark Flowers

Because these books freakily enough do look a great deal like the inside of my head. – Amy M. Weir

One comment about your request to try to include more diversity: I considered it pretty seriously, as I am Latina and that kind of thing matters a lot to me. And after looking at my bookshelves, both at home and in my classroom, I concluded that there just isn’t enough out there in middle-grade land yet. In terms of Hispanic or Latino literature, that is. Everything I came up with, including books by Julia Alvarez, Margarita Engle and Pam Munoz Ryan felt good, but perhaps not quite good enough for my top 10. And it may be that for this kind of list, we go with books that we remember from childhood, or books we’ve reread hundreds of times over the years, and there just isn’t as much that’s been available for that long. I realized that almost all the books that I look to as inspiring examples of Latino culture and experience are by adult or YA authors, which I thought was interesting. Just an observation. – Cecilia Cackley

I include Cecilia’s comment (which really was her comment for this book) because it brings up an interesting point.  It’s important to look at the representation of race on this book, and to see whether or not all cultures have at least some representation.  Not so much?  Can we infer something from that, good or bad?

Don’t be thinking that the recent 100+ million dollar grossing Tim Burton film played any part in this appearance on the poll, by the way.  Folks were voting for this book long before the Burton ads reached their peak.  People just love them some Alice.  And how can I object?  I love her too.  She’s like Dorothy, only she never seems to care whether or not she gets home.

The description of these books’ plots from the publisher reads, “Alice begins her adventures when she follows the frantically delayed White Rabbit down a hole into the magical world of Wonderland, where she meets a variety of wonderful creatures, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts who, with the help of her enchanted deck of playing cards, tricks Alice into playing a bizarre game of croquet.  Alice continues her adventures in Through the Looking-Glass, which is loosely based on a game of chess and includes Carroll’s famous poem Jabberwocky.”

Foul play, cry the masses. Two books as one? ‘Fraid so. Considering that half the time these books are packaged together as one, I felt few qualms putting them together. Most of the votes were for the two of them anyway, so what does it matter really?

The double quicktime recap of how the books came to be comes via Anita Silvey’s Everything I Need to Kn