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Alice at a Glance: One-Page Wonderlands

Posted on February 1, 2013January 26, 2021

Looking for all of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on a single page? Yes, it has been done, and what’s more, you have quite a selection to choose from.

Novel Poster sell this 18 by 26 inch, very-legible print that reveals Alice playing croquet in the negative space ($40).

Postertext make one similar, but with slightly different dimensions—a 20 by 24 inch print with the text split over seven columns reveals Alice talking to the Cheshire Cat ($23.99).

This action shot from Spineless Classics shows their more detailed poster. It measures 50 by 70 centimeters (about 20 by 28 inches) ($39.99).

Litographs offer several options: the 24 x 36 inch print ($29) includes the full text of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass ($29); the 18 x 24 inch print includes the full text of just Wonderland ($24).

The Litographs prints are the only ones available in color ($29 for the smaller poster, $39 for the larger one). They also make a full-text t-shirt, guaranteed to get you some squinty attention whenever you wear it.

For a greater challenge, you might like to try assembling you own one-page Wonderland with this 672-piece jigsaw puzzle from Spineless Classics ($29.99). In addition to whiling away a winter evening, I’m sure it’s also a fascinating way to get to know the book really well.

Happy Birthday Mr. Dogdson!

Posted on January 27, 2013July 10, 2020

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born 181 years ago today. To mark the occasion, here are selection of appropriate cakes. (Click on each image to be taken to the webpage where it was found.)

Tea Party Cake — The full tableau approach, posted on Flickr

Roses Cake — Icing the Roses Red, from Occasions Online

Tim Burton Cake — A Tim Burton tribute, posted by R. Mansur at WonderHowTo.com.

Room Filling Cake — This one seems to fill the room…

And if you haven’t yet had your fill, there’s plenty more here.

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words ‘Eat me’ were beautifully marked in currants. ‘Well, I’ll eat it,’ said Alice, ‘and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I’ll get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens! – Chapter One, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Renaissance Art and Technology Combine to Tell Alice’s Story Again

Posted on January 20, 2013May 7, 2019

Emmanuel Paletz

Are tablet computers revolutionizing the picture book? Ask me again in a hundred years. In the meantime, authors continue to explore the question by experimenting with the ever-willing, always-revolutionary Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. First to be mentioned on this site was Atomic Antelope’s ground-breaking “digital pop-up book”, then David Neal’s animation of classic illustrations. Now we have a third: an unabridged Alice illustrated with images from Renaissance art. The result sounds like it will be interesting:

To portray the colorful events and idiosyncratic characters of this book, Paletz gleans bits and pieces from Jan van Eyck, Joachim Patinir, Quentin Matsys, Hans Holbein, Sandro Botticelli, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Hieronymus Bosch and more, combining them into his signature visual collages which dazzle the eye. Alice is a book filled with riddles, puzzles, illogical delightfulness, and brainteasers.

… Most importantly, Paletz’s layered creation will inspire thought. Readers will fall into musings such as, “What is the historical significance of dressing Fish-Footmen in French Revolution military uniforms and the king as Henry VIII?” The use of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance art extends farther than the eye can see. Paletz pulls from historical events to shape each illustration with significance.

The book is the brainchild of Emmanuel Paletz, a creative consultant for the advertising industry and also the art director for the successful cookbook Art and Cook. Read more about him and about the storybook app on the project’s website. Emmanuel is seeking financial assistance to help bring his ebook project to completion. Donations of any amount can be made on the fundraising site IndieGoGo.

Aceil in addelnnorW: A Bkoo

Posted on January 15, 2013February 4, 2019

For many good reasons, Lewis Carroll’s classic is often chosen as a first text to translate into a new language or medium. Constructors of constructed languages and lovers of word-play have innate reasons to flock to Carroll’s text. Here’s a new “translation” of Alice in Wonderland into a language which is either pointlessly annoying, or an invaluable tool for strengthening your Scrabble skills. Every word of the classic 27,405 word text has been scrambled into an Alphagram (or, an aaaghlmpr, in Alphagrammish.) The apostles of this project claim that reading a “bkoo” is “not only fun, like solving a puzzle, but it also improves your ability to unscramble words and score higher in your favorite word games.”

The first page of “Aceil in addelnnorW,” from bkoo.org

Their blurb actually almost convinces that this could be an entertaining and mind-strengthening endeavor:

The thesis of this book is that Alphagram is a language (albeit more like Pig Latin than any natural language) that can be read, and whoever can read Alphagram can instantly spot anagrams. To learn Alphagram, we propose reading this bkoo of 27,405 words, including 2,576 distinct words. (To play this many words in Scrabble® would take a typical player thirty-five years at one game per week!) While reading the first chapter is challenging, afterwards you will find it reads like a classic translated into a familiar language. Several factors ease the learning curve: 1. Answers. Each page has answers on the back. 2. Context. It is much easier to find anagrams in context. For instance, “addelnnorW” is much easier to decipher after uncovering that it follows “Alice in….” 3. Repetition. Consider, for example, the word “thought,” which occurs 74 times in Alice in Wonderland. The first time you encounter “ghhottu,” it may take a while to unscramble (even with context), but later occurrences are easier as you naturally learn the language. oS ist abck, aelrx, adn ejnoy eht bkoo!

Aceil in addelnnorW: A Bkoo was translated by Cory Abbott sells for $12.95 on Amazon. Rachel Eley wrote to me, “Reading the examples on the website makes my brain feel like my hand feels when I use one of those grip strengtheners for climbers. It hurts but I can’t tell if that is because it good for me or bad for me.” I take back my earlier “pointlessly annoying” comment – Lewis Carroll probably would have loved this project. Meanwhile, we still wait for the first Pig Latin translation.

Alice in Wonderland Mural Discovered at San Diego State University

Posted on January 11, 2013February 4, 2019

A lost mural of Alice in Wonderland and the archaeologist determined to bring it to light were the subjects of an interesting tale told by San Diego public radio station, KPBS, yesterday.

Seth Mallios, head of the anthropology department at SDSU, had been hunting down murals, once common all over campus, when he heard about the Alice mural from Evelyn Kooperman, a retired librarian.

When she was a little girl in the 1950s, her mother used to take her to see two murals tucked away in Hardy Tower. One featured the character of Odysseus. The other, was the “Alice in Wonderland” mural. “I just thought they were wonderful,” says Kooperman. “They were big and bright and colorful. And I just loved them and every year I would say to my mother, ‘I want to go see Alice! I want to go see Alice!’”

Read about Mallios’s discovery of the mural, and of the artist who painted it, on the KPBS website. You can also see an old photograph of the mural and listen to the original radio broadcast.

Tenniel Tattoo Alternatives

Posted on December 11, 2012February 4, 2019

Here’s something we’ve never seen before (although it is true we tend to go about with our heads in a book): pantyhose that create the illusion of a Tenniel tattoo. Choose from the White Rabbit, the Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, or Alice with Flamingo for the finishing touch to any outfit, or any leg, for that matter. The tattoo tights are printed by Hakosen and sold on Etsy.com for $20 a pair.

On the subject of Tenniel prints, we’ve also been meaning to mention this Alice Tea Party Pillowcase Set, sold by Urban Outfitters for $34 (curious dreams not included).

A Random Collection of Videos Relating to Alice

Posted on December 8, 2012February 4, 2019

It’s a wonderland out there on the internet. Just look what we discovered this week…

Life in Five Minutes – Alice in Wonderland posted by dabitch on adland.tv with the caption “This is all I ever took away from that book.” (“What a pity!”)

Yasutaka Funakoshi’s Alice-inspired catwalk collection presented at Tokyo Fashion Week last October.

Lewis Carroll Underworld, a pretty song composed and performed by Boston-based musician Craig Robertson.

That’s all for now. If you have any video finds of your own, remember to share them on our Facebook page.

‘Tis the Season to Remember Who Does the Dishes

Posted on December 3, 2012February 4, 2019

Alice Tea Towel from the British Library

After every tea party must come the washing up (assuming your clock hasn’t stopped at 6 o’clock). Make the job more pleasant, or at least more literary, with the Alice in Wonderland Tea Towel or the Literary Map of Britain and Northern Island Tea Towel from the British Library (around $16 each, plus shipping). These were very popular when they first appeared and sold out quickly. Now they’re back.

Literary Map Tea Towel from the British Library

Alice of Antarctica to Be Auctioned Next Week

Posted on December 1, 2012February 4, 2019

Alice of the Polar Regions, Bonham’s Auction 19952, Lot 63

The expedition ship Discovery in the Antarctic bearing the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–04, and two book by Lewis Carroll

We like to celebrate the fact that the Alice books have been enjoyed all over the world, but did you know that includes Antarctica? Last week, in a story reported by the UK national paper the Telegraph, we learned the interesting and quite touching fact that “Britain’s toughest explorers, who took part in Scott’s gruelling three-year journey to discover the Antarctic, whiled away the freezing dark nights by reading children’s story Alice in Wonderland…” (Read the story in full here.)

Well-travelled Alice books, Bonham’s Auction 19952, Lot 63

The books formed part of the library on board the Discovery, the ship that carried Captain Scott’s successful expedition to the Antarctic regions between 1901 and 1904. These travel-stained copies of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, which once sat among more likely-sounding titles such as Sir Walter Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana and Marco Polo’s Voyages and Travels, are to be auctioned by Bonham’s in their Polar II Sale, December 4, with an estimated price of $3,200 – $6,400.

Marionettes for ‘La Guida di Bragia’ featured in Art Doll Quarterly

Posted on November 27, 2012July 9, 2025

Lewis Carroll came from a large family, and got his start in children’s entertainment and storytelling by writing for and staging plays with his siblings. One surviving example is the puppet play La Guida di Bragia, dating from the early 1850’s. The LCSNA published the text in 2007 with illustrations by Jonathan Dixon – available here for $25. Dixon also spoke at the LCSNA’s Spring 2009 meeting in Santa Fe, followed by a marionette performance staged by Theaterwork’s artistic director David Olson. Good Times! “Together with LCSNA’s multi-talented Jonathan Dixon, Olson talked about the marionette play we would see in the evening: how children’s dolls, rescued from the local Goodwill store, were turned into doll puppets representing the characters of Mooney, Spooney, Sophonisba, and her husband Orlando.” Here’s a photo:

This year, more American puppeteers have tackled La Guida di Bragia. Diane Lewis, who works at the Theatre Arts Department at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California, collaborated with her students to create marionettes for the play, and they have been featured in the Summer 2012 edition of Art Doll Quarterly. The article “Characters Behind the Curtain: Instructor Offers History along with the Magic of the Puppet,” by Mozelle Sukut, included “several large illustrations, and descriptions of Lewis’ techniques, philosophy, research, teaching methods, etc.” (reports Mark Richards of the UK Lewis Carroll Society.) The show was never produced, but the marionettes are very charming.