{"id":1778,"date":"2015-10-29T18:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=1778"},"modified":"2020-05-31T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2020-05-30T22:13:08","slug":"alice-im-wunderland-alice-hinter-den-spiegeln-lewis-caroll-und-floor-rieder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2015\/10\/alice-in-wonderland-alice-behind-the-looking-glass-lewis-caroll-and-floor-rieder\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice in Wonderland & Alice Through the Looking Glass \u2022 Lewis Caroll and Floor Rieder"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> by Lewis Carroll has been on my wish list for a very long time. Time and again it somehow didn\u2019t make it into my cart, and although the edition from Fischer Verlag looks tempting, I always hesitated. That is, until I happened to find this beautiful edition from the Gerstenberg Verlag<\/a>. It was worth the long wait, because this edition\u2014published only this June to mark the 150th anniversary of the first publication\u2014is simply gorgeous.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The illustrations are by the Dutch illustrator Floor Rieder<\/a>, and her style suits this enchanting story perfectly. She has already received awards for the book The Mystery of Life! How Nothing Became Everything<\/em>, and when you look at these outstanding illustrations, it\u2019s easy to see why. For Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> she combined an \u201cold scratching technique\u201d with \u201cmodern computer graphics,\u201d creating a unique style. Her drawings are a superb fit for this children\u2019s book and turn the reading experience into something special. Page by page, the text is enriched in wonderfully atmospheric ways, sometimes flowing around the images (or vice versa). Since the story itself is madcap, the scenes become even easier to picture\u2014while the abstract style of the illustrations stimulates the imagination instead of constraining it with fixed interpretations of what\u2019s described.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Alice\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The book contains two stories: alongside Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>, it also includes Through the Looking-Glass<\/em>\u2014in a wonderfully creative form: the book is a flip book. That means if you turn the book around, the second part begins there. The title page is mirrored, which fits both the title and the flipping mechanism beautifully.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Alice\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

To put it plainly: this is one of the most beautiful books on my shelf. It\u2019s created with so much love, attention to detail, and sensitivity to colors, shapes, and textures\u2014qualities you very rarely encounter. This edition fully deserves to be called a de luxe edition, because that\u2019s exactly what it is. From the table of contents and chapter transitions to the typography, the colors of the type, and even the headband color (which echoes the colors inside the book depending on the page), every detail has been chosen and executed with care.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Alice\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This book is a small work of art\u2014and I say that as someone who is usually not easily charmed by fancy children\u2019s books. This is another review where I start with the exterior, and I hope you\u2019ll forgive me. Don\u2019t worry, the content is of course still highly relevant, but lately I\u2019ve had a knack for finding very beautiful books, and that deserves proper mention here.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Now to the content. Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> is hardly a hidden gem: it\u2019s been adapted countless times, and I saw an animated version as a child. But beyond the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit, I didn\u2019t remember much, so reading it felt quite new to me. And if you start reading without preconceptions, you\u2019ll find yourself, within just a few pages, wondering what Lewis Carroll had been smoking all day. There\u2019s something about what happens here that strongly resembles an overdose and a subsequent trip\u2014at least according to the clich\u00e9, since, apart from good Bavarian beer, I haven\u2019t indulged in any mind-altering substances. The book also proves that bibliophiles don\u2019t need drugs as long as they have their books.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Alice, a little girl, follows a white rabbit into its burrow, falls down the hole, and finds herself in a very odd world. With childlike naivety, Alice faces the crazy things she encounters with openness and goes along with it all, however nonsensical or topsy-turvy it may seem. And there\u2019s a lot of that, because the story reflects the world of children\u2019s imagination in its own way\u2014sometimes completely off the wall, nonsensical, disjointed, and spontaneous, yet often displaying surprising directness and strangeness. In terms of story, Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> is truly a children\u2019s book and, from my point of view, rather dull. Even though the book does, in a sense, have a certain punchline, it didn\u2019t particularly grip me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Alice\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I found Through the Looking-Glass<\/em>, which was published three years later, much better\u2014in terms of plot, ideas, and overall framework. In it, Alice climbs through a mirror in her home and finds herself in the mirror world, moving through different regions as a pawn in a chess game that represents this world. Chapter by chapter she advances one square, meeting numerous other chess pieces\u2014each with very peculiar quirks\u2014with the goal of reaching the top rank and, according to the rules of chess, becoming a queen herself.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Carroll designed this mirror world wonderfully, because many things in it are the reverse of our world. If Alice wants to reach a hill, for instance, she has to walk away from it rather than toward it. Or she meets the White Queen, whose memory stretches into the future rather than the past. The story is full of subtle and overt nods to mirror logic, and set within the chessboard framework, the book offers plenty to ponder. The dialogues are sometimes very quirky\u2014on first glance, completely nonsensical\u2014and yet they open a view onto an utterly unfiltered way of thinking. One example:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cHow old did you say you were?\u201d
Alice did a quick calculation and said, \u201cSeven and a half.\u201d
\u201cWrong!\u201d cried Humpty Dumpty triumphantly. \u201cYou didn\u2019t say a word about it.\u201d (p. 110)<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Well, Humpty Dumpty has a point: Alice hadn\u2019t said anything about her age before. He takes \u201cdid you say\u201d completely literally\u2014something an adult would hardly notice.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Alice\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For Alice, Carroll turns the world completely upside down: her size, time, space, and language\u2014with its socially conditioned conventions\u2014are all shaken to the core. The creatures seem hostile, particularly because they don\u2019t play by the unwritten rules of human communication. On the one hand, that\u2019s entertaining, unusual, and delightfully odd; on the other hand, it\u2019s not entirely my thing. In any case, this book leaves ample room for interpretation, and you can read a great deal into Alice\u2019s dreamlike adventure. What Carroll actually intended to convey, in my view, remains in the shadows. That\u2019s precisely what makes Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> so fascinating for many readers and why it has been reinterpreted in numerous films, stage plays, and other art forms. Which brings us back to this gorgeous edition whose illustrations retell Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> and make it part of a new work of art\u2014one that contains the original text but is also so much more, giving faces to the characters and events and spreading them across every page, not even stopping at the endpapers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Alice\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Conclusion<\/strong>: This children\u2019s classic, which even made it onto the ZEIT Library of 100 Books<\/em>, is certainly worth reading. I didn\u2019t find the story itself particularly exciting, and the plot isn\u2019t exactly a showstopper. What turns this into a genuine work of art and makes it a pleasure to read is this artful, enchanting edition. Floor Rieder, the illustrator, has transformed the story with fitting and incisive images, reframing Alice\u2019s mad world in a completely fresh way. The strange creatures and the highly flexible, paradoxical world\u2014one that respects neither space and time nor any social conventions\u2014take on a very appealing face, and it\u2019s a joy to dive into Alice\u2019s mirror world, to marvel, and often to understand nothing at all. Standing clueless beside the action with Alice is part of this book, as is the disconcerting realization that its unfriendly inhabitants are, surprisingly often, right. Overall, I was far more enthralled by the beautiful design than by the content, which often feels too nonsensical and not very gripping.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Book information: <\/strong>Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> & Through the Looking-Glass<\/em> \u2022 Lewis Carroll \u2022 Gerstenberg Verlag \u2022 384 pages \u2022 ISBN 9783836958646<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll has been on my wish list for a very long time. Time and again it somehow didn\u2019t make it into my cart, and although the edition from Fischer Verlag looks tempting, I always hesitated. That is, until I happened to find this beautiful edition from the Gerstenberg Verlag. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Alice in Wonderland & Alice Through the Looking Glass \u2022 Lewis Caroll and Floor Rieder”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Alice im Wunderland & Alice hinter den Spiegeln \u2022 Lewis Caroll und Floor Rieder - lesestunden","description":"Schon sehr lange ist Alice im Wunderland von Lewis Caroll auf meiner Wunschliste. Immer wieder ist das Buch dann doch nicht im Warenkorb gelandet und obwohl die"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[83,10,20],"tags":[69,68],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-childrens-book","category-classics","category-reviews","tag-floor-rieder","tag-lewis-caroll"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/alice_im_wunderland_1_2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}