Lewis Carroll

Alice in Deadland by Mainak Dhar

/ Casey Tingle / Leave a comment

If you’re a big fan of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and a fan of zombies I highly recommend you get a copy of Alice in Deadland by Mainak Dhar.

Alice has spent her entire life in Deadland, a land where it’s humans vs. zombies. Her education has consisted of learning how to kill zombies, also known as “biters”, through any means possible, and she’s pretty damn good at it. At fifteen years old, she’s one of the best in her town and fending off the biters.

One day, while sitting with her sister a little away from town, she watches as a biter wearing rabbit ears disappears down a hole. Jumping into action, Alice follows it and finds herself trapped in a new world where zombies are chasing her down. Before they can change her or destroy her, though, they realize she resembles a drawing scribbled on one of the walls: a blonde girl falling down a hole.

Captured, the zombies take her to their queen who is half human, half zombie. The Queen begins to open Alice’s eyes to who the zombies really are and she begins to question all her teaching. Are the zombies really blood thirsty killers or are they just misunderstood?

Originally only in e-book format, Alice in Deadland can now be found in paperback through Amazon.com. I originally found it while looking for another e-book through Amazon. Reading through the first page I fell in love immediately. It was one of the most creative ideas for a zombie story I had ever heard of. There are a few typos, but nothing that will distract the reader from the story. It also becomes very strange and doesn’t fully follow the Alice in Wonderland storyline, which isn’t all bad. It’s nice that Dhar didn’t take the entire story from Carroll and just add zombies. A lot of the characters are similar and the actual story Alice in Wonderland plays a major role in the book, but that’s as close as it gets.

Grade: A-

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

/ Casey Tingle / 1 Comment

We join Alice again for another short adventure, but this time not to Wonderland. Instead we travel through the looking glass in her house into the world on the other side. Here things are somewhat similar, only backwards.

Once in the looking glass world, Alice meets the Red Queen and confides in her that she, too, would like to be a queen. The Red Queen tells her that she only needs to get to the 8th square on the chess board to achieve this.

On her journey she meets a new cast of characters, including Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledee and Tweedledum and some very talkative flowers. There are also some characters who we have met before with some smaller roles. It doesn’t say it right out, but the illustrations make it seem that the messengers, Hatta and Haigha (pronounced like ‘mayor’), resemble the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.

Through the Looking Glass is another great example of one of the best children’s books. I always feel that it doesn’t get enough credit, though, because usually adaptations of the book into film usually combine the two stories until the title Alice in Wonderland. For example, the mad tea party and the unbirthday song end up together in the Disney version. However, the mad tea party is in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and unbirthday’s are mentioned by Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass.

But it’s understandable why they combine the two stories together. Both of them are short (only 120 pages in length) so it would be difficult to make both their own separate movies. They also work together very well. Although Alice isn’t in Wonderland in Through the Looking Glass it’s almost as if she is. The experiences she has are very similar in both worlds, but at the same time different enough so the stories aren’t exactly the same.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

/ Casey Tingle / 1 Comment

One of the best children’s books ever written, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll tells the story of a young girl named Alice who follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole and goes on the adventure of her life.

From talking animals to food and drink that changes your size, a world that Alice first finds “curiouser and curiouser” soon ceases to shock her. On this journey she meets a colorful cast of characters: a white rabbit with a pocket watch, a duchess with a pig for a baby, a chesire cat who never ceases to grin, a Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Doormouse and finally, the red queen, who she defiantly stands up against.

This would have to be my fourth time reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and it never ceases to entertain me. I always find something that I seem to forget about in my memories of it and I can never remember the exact order the story goes in. Which isn’t a bad thing. If I’m going to re-read a book several times I’d rather not remember everything about it, otherwise there’s no point in re-reading it.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland will definitely be a book I will read to my children when they are little and I sincerely hope that every child experiences this amazing tale at least once in their life.