If You WereALICE

In WonderlandGIVEAWAY

Adapted by Gerry Gaston, Laura Livi, Corrado Sesselego

Art by Laura Livi

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (born 27 Jan. 1832 Daresbury, Cheshire, England died 14 Jan. 1898 Guildford, Surrey, England), who went by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer.

Carrolls family was of northern English origin with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgsons ancestors were army officers or members of the Church of England clergy.

Carrolls father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England and involved

himself in the religious disputes that were dividing the church during the 19th Century. He inclined to Anglo-Catholicism and educated his children according to such principles. Despite this, Carroll had an ambiguous, if not contradictory, relationship with his family values and the whole Church of England.

A brilliant mind though not always a perfect student, Carroll excelled at learning with little effort. He pursued an academic career at the Christ Church College in Oxford (the same as his father), where he won the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855. He held this position for the next 26 years, remaining at Christ Church until his death.

One distinctive trait he had from childhood was what he referred to as his hesitation: a stammer which affected him for his whole life. It is believed that he joked about his stammer, referring to himself as the Dodo (DO-DO-Dodgson) in the first Alice book. The stammer was perhaps more a personal problem than a social one, since Carroll was well accepted in 19th century English society and performed well at singing, mimicry and storytelling. On the other hand, what he could not accomplish with his social skills he achieved instead with his visual prowess in the field of photography.While Carroll was mostly regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative, he also expressed interest in philosophies and religions that reached far beyond this view. He was a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research, an English non-profit organization aimed at studying parapsychological events.

In the period between his early published works (1854-1856) and the success of Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Carroll became familiar with the pre-Raphaelite movement. He met John Ruskin (1857), developed a closeness with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also became friends with Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes. He also befriended fairy-tale writer George MacDonald, who later convinced Carroll to submit Alices adventures for publication after MacDonalds children read them enthusiastically.

In 1856, Carroll published the romantic poem Solitude under what would become his famous pen name. Lewis Carroll itself was a word play from Dodgsons name: Charles Lutwidge (first and second name) were translated into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus and then translated back into English as Carroll Lewis only to be

Lewis Carroll the Writer

The Alicesreversed.In that same year, Henry Liddell was appointed Dean of the Christ Church College and moved in with young wife Lorina and their 4 children: Harry, Lorina, Edith and Alice, all of whom greatly influenced Carrolls personal and writing life.

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THE ALICES

The AlicesOn July 4, 1862, rowing from Folly Bridge, Oxford, to Godstow on the Isis river, ten year old Alice Liddell asked Charles L. Dodgson for a story to amuse herself and her two sisters, eight year old Edith and thirteen year old Lorina. While Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed the boat, Dodgson told the story of a girl named Alice and her adventures underground after she fell into a rabbit hole. It was not the first story Dodgson had told the Liddell girls, but this time Alice begged him to write it down. In that moment, global literature for children of the 19th Century changed forever.

The extent to which Alice may be identified with the little Liddell girl of the same name is still controversial, since, in his letters, Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, denied that his character was based on any living young girl. Still, there is evidence suggesting Alice Pleasance Liddell and her sisters influenced the Wonderland saga.

The original manuscript of Alices Adventures Under Ground is dedicated to Alice Liddell as A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer's Day. The prologue of Alices Adventures seems to recall the boat trip of 1862 with a specific reference to the Cruel Three requesting a tale from Carroll and almost forcing him to comply. In addition, there is an acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass that spells out Alice Pleasance Liddell. A word play with the word pleasance in the last verse of the prologue of Through the Looking-Glass links the start and end of the adventures with Alice Liddell.

On the other hand, the Alice character is not physically identical to the real life Alice in either the manuscript version of Alices Adventure Under Ground or in the first edition of the book. Carroll followed the creation of the illustrations of Alices Adventures in Wonderland with zealous enthusiasm. He personally chose artist John Tenniel to be the illustrator of his novel, paid him on his own, and also covered the costs for the engraver. Surely the images Tenniel produced represented exactly what Carroll had in mind.

If Alice Liddell was not the model for the literary Alice, other child-friends might have been. It is rumored that Carroll sent Tenniel some photos of Mary Hilton Badcock to be used as a model; Badcock strongly resembles the iconographic Alice. Biographer Anne Clark affirms that Carroll used Edith Liddell as a model for the physical representation of his characters. The literary Alice could simply be the blend of multiple child models, either the three Liddell sisters or totally different children that captured Carrolls attention. Or, as Carroll always declared, Alice was simply created from his own imagination.

The Alice in the actual game book is removed from the classical Disney version of the character and also moves away from the Tenniel interpretation. Instead, it can be considered an attempt to create in a single figure a mixture of all the young girls that may have inspired Alice back in the days of the Victorian era.

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THE RAVEN AND WRI-TING-DESK RIDDLE

Why is a Raven like a Writing-Desk?

This riddle is nonsensical, posed to Alice by the Mad Hatter. Once Alice gives up trying to find the answer, he admits he hasnt the slightest idea what the answer might be. Carroll himself confessed that the riddle was never intended to be answerable, and even Alice points out at the March Hare tea party that looking for an answer to such a riddle is only a waste of time.

Nevertheless, in the preface to the 1896 edition of Alices Adventures,Carroll addres-ses the issue, turning it into a word play. He wrote: Enquiries have been so often ad-dressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatters Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate an-swer: Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!, where N-E-V-A-R is Raven spelled backwards. Unfortunately the word play was lost to the keen eye of an overzealous proofreader who normalized nevar into never, creating more confusion among readers.

As of today, some of the most popular answers that have been proposed are collected in The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner (1st ed. 1960, Definitive Edition 1998-99).

Here is just a sample:Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes. (Sam Loyd, 1914)

Because Poe wrote on both. (Sam Loyd, 1914)

Bills and tales (tails) are among their characteristics. (Sam Loyd, 1914)

Because they stand on their legs, conceal their steels (steals), and ought to be made to shut up. (Sam Loyd, 1914)

Because theres a B in both, and theres an N in neither (Aldous Huxley on Vanity Fair, September 1928, providing a nonsensical answer), later expanded by James Michie: because each begins with E.Both have quills dipped in ink. (David B. Jodrey, Jr)Because it slopes with a flap. (Cyril Pearson)

Because without them both Brave New World could not have been written. (Roy Da-venport)

Because one has flapping fits and the other fitting flaps. (Peter Veale)

Because one is good for writing books and the other better for biting rooks. (George Simmers)

Because a writing-desk is a rest for pens and a raven is a pest for wrens. (Tony We-ston)

Because raven contains five letters, which you might equally well expect to find in a writing-desk (Roger Baresel)

Because they are both used to carri-on de-composition. (Noel Petty)

Because they both tend to present unkind bills. (M.R. Macintyre)

Because they both have a flap in oak. (J. Tebbutt)

Because it bodes ill for owed bills. (Francis Huxley)

Because they each contain a riverNeva and Esk. (by Francis Huxley)

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LESS FAMOUS PUPPY

EPISODE

The Puppy EpisodeAlice runs away from the White Rabbit house, and heads back to the woods, only to meet a huge puppy who wants to play with her.

Alice is very scared by the playful, but aggressive behavior of the puppy and manages to run away at the last minute.

The Puppy Episode is probably one of the less known in the whole Wonderland bo-oks, however it is narratively funny and pedagocically interesting.

Carroll switches the perspective and put Alice in poor Bills shoes (the little lizard she kicked in the Rabbit s house, after having grown to to gigantic proportion)...

Choose Your Own Path

If You Were...Alice in Wonderland

Interactive Childrens Book Adapted from the Original Story as Written by Lewis Carroll

What if Alice Decided NOT to Drink the Potion? What if Alice just Got Up and LEFT the Tea Party?What if Alice Decided to STAND UP to the Queen?

These Choices, and Many More, will be Yours to Make as YOU Guide Alice on Her Adventure in Wonderland!

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Edited by Krystal ElghanayanDesigned by Emiliano Civiletti, Gerry Gaston, Corrado Sesselego

First published in 2014 by Project A Publishing, LLC

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IF I WERE book and gamebook series 2014 Project A Publishing, LLC & Blue Monkey StudioIf I Were Alice in Wonderland 2014 Project A Publishing, LLC & Blue Monkey StudioArtwork 2010 Blue Monkey Studio

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