AudioFile Magazine presents a Listeners' Guide to Alice In Wonderland and Free Audiobook Download

AudioFile, the magazine and website devoted to audiobooks, has announced that for two weeks only it is going "mad about Alice!" - a remarkable instance of infectious disease control and an example to Hollywood.

In its madness, Audiofile is offering a free download of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as narrated by Michael York, courtesy of Blackstone Audio.

This download is only part of an Audiofile Listeners’ Guide to Alice in Wonderland, "an online multimedia event where visitors can listen to exclusive conversations with Alice narrators, read audiobook reviews and recommendations, and discover more online resources about Alice in Wonderland." Fans are also invited to discuss their favorite audiobook versions of Alice on AudioFile's Facebook page.

Items in the the Listeners’ Guide include conversations with narrators Michael York and Jim Dale, and with Gabrielle de Cuir, the audio producer of York’s reading of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and of the recently released audiobook, Alice I Have Been.

One feature that sounds particulary interesting is "Three Mad Cups of Tea," the Mad Tea-Party, read in turn by three different narrators. I hope some English teachers stumble across this one. The lesson plan practically writes itself.

Alice's Kitchen Sink Released on March 2nd, 2010

Paramount's Alice in Wonderland (1933), directed by Norman Z. McLeod, has been mentioned a lot in the past few weeks, as the first big Hollywood all-star blow-out adaptation of Lewis Carroll's books (with such stars as Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and W.C. Fields.) Slightly lost amongst the thousands of other Alices being released this month was the fact that this film, which was never released on VHS or DVD, is finally available (list price $19.99). Why is it being released as Universal Homes Entertainment? Our source from inside Paramount answers that question:

Back in 1957, Paramount sold most (but not all) of its pre-1948 film library to Universal for some quick cash (at the time, Paramount was ailing, financially). Thus, a number of Paramount films are now distributed by Universal, under their corporate and home video label [...] Paramount no longer owns the rights to these films.

There's a review from the New York Times here.

Also released on DVD on March 2nd is the SyFy miniseries Alice (list price $19.99), which originally aired last December. Jonathan Miller's 1966 adaptation was issued on DVD (featuring John Gielgud, Peter Cook, Peter Sellers; list price $14.98). I noticed that Amazon has a deal selling all three for $38.97, the price of which won't even get a family of three into the IMAX to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3D.

There's more: Hallmark's "overblown" 1999 television special of Alice in Wonderland (with Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Short and Christopher Lloyd) is being reissued on DVD (list price, $19.99) along with its companion Through the Looking Glass (with Geoffrey Palmer and Ian Holm; list price only $9.98!)

Now, several tie-ins to the Disney movie were also released March 2nd: several hot new video games for Nintendo Wii (list price $39.99), Nintendo DS (list price $29.99), and a Disney Interactive computer game for PC ($19.99). The movie soundtrack by Danny Elfman was released on March 2nd (list price $18.98). And merchandise, merchandise, merchandise, too much to mention here.

Did you know Alice stories can also be purchased in a book form? Many editions of this "book" were released in conjunction with the big movie premiere, but the only book rolled out on March 2nd (to keep true to the theme of this post), was one called "The Real Alice in Wonderland: A Role Model for the Ages" by C.M. Rubin and Gabriela Rubin (list price, $29.95), from AuthorHouse. A day after it was released, it appears to already be out of stock. From the product description:

In 2006, award-winning author C.M. Rubin and her daughter, Gabriella Rubin (who are related to the Liddell family), began an incredible journey to create the ultimate book about the original Alice in Wonderland's life. Their grand pictorial, biographic vision for the book involved collecting photographs spanning two centuries, reaching out to many celebrated Alice in Wonderland artists (including Vik Muniz, Annie Liebovitz, Mark Steele, Lizzy Rockwell, Helen Oxenbury, Frances Broomfield, Jeanne Argent, David Cooper, Bruce Fuller, Tatiana Ianovskaia, Jewel, and Tom Otterness), and connecting with museums, libraries and schools around the world. The Real Alice in Wonderland book is told using never before seen pictures along with prominent voices from Alice’s lifetime and from the present day. C.M. Rubin and her daughter Gabriella explore the theme of inspiration. Behind every great person there is the person who inspires and believes in him or her. The person who motivates them to realize their dreams. This magnificent cross-atlantic epic will fascinate you -- it will make you think again: what does it mean to inspire?
The Real Alice In Wonderland book is dedicated to all those who inspire the minds and souls of human beings.

However, don't miss Simply Read Books edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, no longer out of print, with Iassen Ghiuselev's unique and beautiful illustrations, reissued in hardcover on March 1st (list price, $24.95).

Beautiful Carroll books online at rarebookroom.org

Twenty-seven beautifully rendered hi-resolution facsimiles of old Lewis Carroll books (and hundreds from other authors) can be read online at rarebookroom.org. From Mark Burstein's collection, there are translations "in Dutch, Esperanto (ill: LeFanu), Farsi, French (Rackham, Tenniel), German (Birnbaum, Tenniel), Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili," and English editions with illustrations by Maybank, McManus (pictured above), Pease, Pogany, Rackham, Charles Robinson, Rountree, and Winter.

New edition of Through the Looking-Glass, illustrated by Gavin L. O'Keefe

A new edition of Through the Looking-Glass, illustrated by Gavin L. O'Keefe, was released this month by Ramble House.

O'Keefe is an Australian artist who has already illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark. His gently surreal black and white illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass can be previewed in the form of selected greetings cards available for purchase from RedBubble.com.

A hardcover edition is available at Lulu.com for $24.99.

A trade paperback edition is available at CreateSpace.com for $15.99.

The Mystery of Lewis Carroll book giveaway at Alice 2010 Fan Club website

You could win a free copy of Jenny Woolf's excellent new biography, The Mystery of Lewis Carroll, by leaving a comment on this post at alice2010.blogspot.com. This Alice fan club blog centers around the Tim Burton movie but also chronicles many other Carroll-related products and things-of-interest.

Camille Rose Garcia's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Camille Rose Garcia, an artist from L.A.'s lowbrow art movement, has illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Surely one of the most punk Alices to go underground, it was released on Groundhog Day, 2010. Below is a sketch posted on the blog Arrested Motion, but we look forward to seeing the finished product in beautiful hardcover, from Collins Design (list price $16).

Neat Alice Dust Jacket + Bookmark Design from Icoeye

A designer who specializes in icons, Igor “Rogix” Udushlivy, has a concept for dust jackets with matching bookmarks. "I wonder that it would be great if we can use dust jackets and bookmarks together to create a unique image of a paper book," he writes. "This idea can help to expand book’s space." The elegant design for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is pictured above, and there's dozens more at icoeye.com.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

I've seen some Alice-themed display tables at various bookstores recently (for instance, in the U.C. San Diego bookstore), and this new book Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin (mentioned in our post below about the USA Today article) is being prominently hawked. Whilst Disney revs up for 3-D Tim Burton spectacular, appealing to the ADD demographic, this new historical novel is marketed squarely at the book-club crowd. Narrated by Alice Hargreaves née Liddell in her octogenarian dotage, she remembers her life using a stylized semicolonoholic phony-Victorian voice:

So yes, I do get tired; tired of pretending to be Alice in Wonderland still, always. Although, it has been no easier being Alice Pleasance Hargreaves. Truly, I wonder; I have always wondered-----

Which is the real Alice, and which pretend?

Oh dear! I'm sounding like one of Mr. Dodgson's nonsense poems now. He was so clever at that sort of thing; much cleverer than I, who never had the patience, not then, not now.

Kudos for using the correct personal pronoun after the conjunction "than", but the result is sounding more British than the British. Apparently the book continues on long past her and her sisters' relationship with the strange, wonderful and affectionate Mr. Dodgson: thru Alice's relationship with Queen Victoria's hemophiliac son Prince Leopold, and into the lives of her own sons (one of whom is named Caryl.) The cover price is $25, available where all handsome new hardcover books are sold.

Alice Eats Wonderland: A Cookbook

Alice Eats Wonderland, "An Irreverent Annotated Cookbook Adventure," is available now. Authored by by LCSNA members August A. Imholtz, Jr. and Alison Tannenbaum - aka Baumholtz (we like portmanteau names) - the cookbook follows the twelve chapter format of AAIW, but this time Alice gets a bit more to eat than cake and biscuits.

Menu items include Stuffed Dormouse, Jugged Hare and Iguana Tamales, but fear not for your favorite animal characters! (or at least, fear less!), the publisher, Applewood Books, reassures us: "Although many of the characters seem, alas, to be transformed into edible dishes during the adventure, the story has a surprisingly happy ending."

We hear that Alice Eats Wonderland combines excerpts from the original text, scholarly notes and original illustrations with recipes to challenge, intrigue, and possibly upset, the most adventurous gastronome. Has anyone had a chance to sample the book? Has anyone jugged a hare? Please post your reviews and experiences in the comments below!

Alice Eats Wonderland is available at $14.95 per copy, plus shipping, from Applewood Books, 1 River Road, Carlisle, MA, 01741. Phone: 781-271-0055; e-mail: applewood@awb.com

Lewis Carroll Society Meeting with Jasper Fforde

Author Jasper Fforde, best known for his novel The Eyre Affair, and other adventures of the courageous literary detective Thursday Next, will be speaking to the Lewis Carroll Society in London on January 29th. Here is the full announcement:

The Lewis Carroll Society is delighted to announce that best-selling contemporary author Jasper Fforde has agreed to give us a talk on the influence that Lewis Carroll has had on his work.

Jasper’s best known series of highly literate comic novels is set in a parallel world where people can move into and out of books and thus change the events in them. The main function of the heroine of this series is to prevent nefarious alterations being made to classic plots by the villains of the piece, and in this she is aided or obstructed by a variety of fictional characters including several from Carroll’s works (such as the renamed Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, for example!). These novels abound with jokes and puns and wordplay and literary pastiches – remind you of any celebrated nineteenth century Oxford don at all?

This is expected to be a popular meeting so it is essential that anyone attending books in advance. Please send an email to Shirley Jacobs to confirm availability of places, etc.

Doors open 19:00, talk starts at 19:30.

Visit the Lewis Carroll Society Events webpage for booking information.

2011 Calender with Iassen Ghiuselev's new Looking-Glass Illustrations

Iassen Ghiuselev's beautiful illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were published by Simply Read Books in 2003 & will be re-issued in March 2010. (For obvious reasons, are we expecting a lot of timely reissues?) Ghiuselev creates a large Escher-esque poster from which smaller bits are extracted for the individual pages of the book. His Through the Looking-Glass, pictured above, is not yet released, but a 2011 Calender (list price $13.95) is now available for pre-order by Simply Read. (There was a similar such thing with his AAIW in 2007, now hard to find.)

Alice books plugged in Today's USA Today

A handful of new Alice books, in particular, and the revival of Alice in general, was written about by Craig Wilson in today's USA Today. They even made an online quiz (pop-culture heavy), How well do you know 'Alice in Wonderland'? - although I disagreed with a couple of the answers. Here's the books they plug, ending with a quote by Mark Richards:

•Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte, $25), out today. "I saw a photo of Alice Liddell (the model for the Alice character) taken by Charles Dodgson, and it made me realize that this was a lot more than just a children's story," says Benjamin, who built her novel around Alice's life after her childhood fame. "She was unflappable, not a typical Victorian. And she survived it all, just like Alice survived it all in the books. She was never beaten down."

•The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf (St. Martin's Press, $27.99), out Feb. 2. Woolf sheds more light on the mysterious Dodgson in this new biography, examining everything from his relationship with Alice and her older sister to his controversial photographing of nude young girls. "The more closely Lewis Carroll is studied, the more he seems to slide quietly away," Woolf writes.

•A new single-volume paperback edition of Carroll's two classic Alice stories ($8.95). Oxford World's Classics has reissued Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) with a new introduction by Peter Hunt, an expert in children's literature. Oxford Children's Classics released a new hardcover of Alice's Adventure in Wonderland in April ($9.95).

•The Disney movie Alice in Wonderland, combining live action and animation. Alice is now 19, fleeing a proposed marriage and, yes, she follows a white rabbit into a hole, entering Wonderland once again. Depp is the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter plays the Queen of Hearts, and Mia Wasikowska is Alice. Release date: March 5.

Why is it Alice's time again?

"The timeless appeal of the Alice books lies not only in their wonderfully imaginative qualities but, perhaps more important, in the way they touch our emotions," says Mark Richards, chairman of the Lewis Carroll Society in London.

That answer seemed to be to a slightly different question. Thank you, Jenny Woolf, for sending us this article.

Disney's Alice in Wonderland Press Kit: Books within Books, USB keys, & more

Blogger Elizabeth Snead reports at The Dishrag that "Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland' press kit is a trip in itself."

The lucky recipients got "a very large box" containing "a large faux antiquarian book of Alice in Wonderland."

Inside the first book with drawings/photos of Tim Burton and the Lewis Carroll is another a delightfully smaller book with illustrations of locations and sets.

Inside that book is another smaller book with illustrations of the characters, Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), etc.

Inside that book is another smaller book containing a heavy metal key. And there's a note that needed a magnifying glass to read it that says: The USB key will take you beyond the gates of Wonderland and unveil the many secrets that await you."

We were kinda hoping for one pill that would make us larger, but whatever.

Anyway, breathlessly, we stuck the key in my computer and....

On the USB key is a cool new trailer and three photos from the film.

Leave it to Disney to make their "Alice in Wonderland" press kit as exciting an adventure as Burton's adaptation of the classic tale promises to be.

The rabbit hole has never been like this.

Thank you Ms. Snead for the images and description. Now, how do we get one!?

Alice in Lojban, the Logical Language

The Rev. Charles L. Dodgson made important contributions to both Logic and Language. He died around a century before Lojban, a logical language, was developed--, so we'll never know what he might have thought of (as the wikipedia defines it) "a constructed, syntactically unambiguous human language based on predicate logic." Is language inherently logical, or can words mean what we choose them to mean? Does organic language have a sort of nonsense logic to it? How would Rev. Dodgson feel about a made-up language based on logic?

This website lojban.org describes its "effort to translate Alice's Adventures In Wonderland into lojban" as "ongoing." They've placed it in the public domain, and it is downloadable in a number of formats. We are told by Michael Everson of Evertype that it will be published in the near future. I would love to hear from one of the contributers how they approached the translation of the puns and wordplay.

It's an elegant-looking language, if it does have that certain made-up look to it. Here's the "Lobster Quadrille":

e’o sutra doi cakcurnu i ko ti’a zgana ua pa

xajyfi’e noi jbitrixe gi’e me mi rebla stapa

i ui a’a ro le jukni e le respa ca se ganse

gi’e denpa mi le canre i pei do ba kansa dansu

i aipei naipei aipei naipei aipei do ba dansu

i aipei naipei aipei naipei naipei do ba dansu

i do ka’enai se xanri le nu pluka co mokau

ca le nu mi’o se renro fi le xamsi i’a au

i dardukse i dardukse sei cy spuda tolselmansa

doi merlanu ki’e ku’i i mi na ba kansa dansu

i ainai einai ainai einai ainai mi ba dansu

i ainai einai ainai einai einai mi ba dansu

i na selvai le ni darno sei le pendo ze’i frati

i iasai lo drata korbi ca’a drata mlana zvati

i le ni darno le glico cu ni jibni be la frans

i ko carna doi cakcurnu i ei do ba kansa dansu

i aipei naipei aipei naipei aipei do ba dansu

i aipei naipei aipei naipei naipei do ba dansu

UPDATE: I just discovered a recording of the Lobster Quadrille in Esperanto, for comparison:

	Lewis Carroll - Esperanto - Lobster Quadrille .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

[Your name here]'s Adventures in Wonderland

Here's a strange one...

Imagine opening Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and starting to read. Except instead of Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt and Benvolio, the names you see are yours and those of your family or friends. Each Personalised Classic is custom-printed with the names you choose for the main characters (up to 6 names) and your own dedication.

This is the slightly unsettling service offered by Acorn Gifts. In addition to Romeo and Juliet, you and your loved ones could also star in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Pride and Prejudice. It's interesting that two out of three of these options contain explicit discussions about the relationship between names and things. Even stranger, there does not seem to be a way for the buyer to specify which character gets which name. What a thought-provoking gift.

***

[Capulet's orchard.]
WANDA [Coming forward.]:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Steve is the sun!

***

"Must a name mean something" Nevaeh asked doubtfully?"

"Of course is must," Peaches Geldof said with a short laugh: "my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours you might be any shape, almost."

A.P. Miller's "Beyond the Looking Glass" from Red Rose Publishing

Red Rose Publishing is an online Romance fiction site, where you can buy digital books and escape into amorous fantasy. One of these, by A.P. Miller, is a collection of fairy tale-themed shorts called Beyond the Looking Glass by A.P. Miller, downloadable in pdf and other formats for $2.99. (I don't see how "beyond" the Looking Glass is a fundamentally different preposition from going "through" it - if you're already through it, how much more additionally beyond can you go? But it's a title that has been used elsewhere by eating disorder specialist Remunda Ranch in her 1992 Beyond the Looking Glass: Daily Devotions for Overcoming Anorexia and Bulimia; for Alan Downs' 1997 Beyond the Looking Glass: Overcoming the Seductive Culture of Corporate Narcissism; for the DVD Beyond The Looking Glass- A Behind The Scenes Tour Of The Tennessee Aquarium; and on dozens of other books.)

Alongside Rhed Riding Hood and Snow White, the titular titillation of Miller's Beyond "finds Alice set in an underground world she would never expect through the very nature of it, which forces her to find her way back through Wonderland with the help of the Cheshire cat." Missy Brown's review of this at ParaNormalRomance.com says: "Each story is told with well thought out plots and twists, I kept looking forward to what came next. The love scenes are so naughty, they will have you running to find your own Big Bad Wolf, or not so Prince Charming."

Keith Sheppard's Wonderland Revisited

Evertype has published a book of new Alice stories called Wonderland Revisited and the Games Alice Played There by author Keith Sheppard, with illustrations by Cynthia Brownell. At Sheppard's website, www.writerman.org.uk, you can read the first chapter of the book & also some of his other nonsense verse.

Here is the blurb from the back cover:

“Excuse me,” said Alice to a small white Mouse in red shorts. “What precisely is a custard race?”

Did Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass leave you yearning for more? Join Alice on her new journey and meet the extraordinary inhabitants of Wonderland, both familiar and new.

If your bed turned into a boat and you found yourself “drifting off” in an entirely unexpected manner how would you find your way home? The Jack of Diamonds says it’s Alice’s own fault for being fast asleep—had she slept more slowly she wouldn’t be so far from home.

The Red Queen, the Mah-jong Dragons, even the Red King’s Gamekeeper, all seem helpful enough at first—but things never quite turn out the way Alice hopes!

Brimming with wordplay, nonsense verse, and a cast of eccentric characters each with their own peculiar logic, this adventure is faithful to the style of the originals, picking up the pen where Lewis Carroll put it down. Be swept away on a torrent of humour and madness. Alice is back!

It can be purchased from Amazon.com for $12.95 or Amazon.co.uk for £8.50.

Alice's Adventures under Ground: new typeset edition with Carroll's original illustrations

Evertype has published a handsome new edition of Alice's Adventure's under Ground, Lewis Carroll's earlier version of Alice's adventures. Michael Everson, who has previously translated AAIW into Irish, is the editor, creating a book design inspired by Martin Gardiner's Annotated Alice and original elements from the facsimile. He has typeset the text, making it easier to read than the facsimiles. And this edition uses Lewis Carroll's own original illustrations (which Carroll would not have thought were professional enough to be published widely in the 1860s, but, by our modern standards, are very cool.) It is now available from amazon.com for $10.95 or amazon.co.uk for £7.95. More about this edition at Evertype.

Free Samples from Dover Publications

Each week DoverPublications.com emails subscribers with a list of publication samples aimed at teachers. Last month's offering included both the seasonal and the fashionable: at the bottom of the list was a selection of Christmas and Hanukkah origami projects, at the top were extracts from the Dover Thrift Edition of AAIW with Tenniel's illustrations, two Alice coloring books, and a newly-released soft-cover edition of AAIW as illustrated by Willy Pogány in 1929. The latter is now available for purchase on their website.

Reading extracts of a coloring book is probably worse than reading a book with no pictures at all, but it could supply some rather nice clip art files for this year's Christmas letter.

Силви и Бруно: Sylvie & Bruno now in Bulgarian!

I believe this is the first time Lewis Carroll's Sylvie & Bruno has appeared in Bulgarian, in a new translation by Rosa Grigorova. Here's the blurb from knigagb.com:

Очарователната приказка – последното голямо произведение на Луис Карол, е триумф на човешкото въображение, каквото само човек с неговата рядка чувствителност може да създаде.
За „Силви и Бруно” литературните критици казват, че това е трудът на живота му, а книгите за Алиса са само генералната му репетиция.
Разказ за странните приключения на малки сестричка и братче в три различни места: Англия, Фейландия и Вънландия – прелестна пародия на реалния свят на Карол в Оксфорд с веселата си йерархия от ректори, заместник-ректори и ерудирани, макар и много разсеяни професори, и още десетки други, всички изобилно поръсени с типичната за Карол игра на думи, до един въвлечени в заплетени и изпълнени с напрежение приключения, пътуване във времето, несподелена любов... и гения на един от най-очарователните и изобретателни виртуози на английския език.

Or, according to Google Translate: "For Sylvie and Bruno literary critics say it is difficult of his life, and Alice books are just his general rehearsal." This goes for €10 where all fine Bulgarian books are sold.