Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has delighted children and adults the world over for more than 100 years. Now, in an exqisite new edition of Lewis Carroll's masterwork, acclaimed Spanish illustrator Angel Dominguez captures all of the original's pungent wit and whimsy in his own surrealistic style. Artisan's beautifully designed and produced volume of Alice will be a treasured addition to the international body of classic children's literature.

Through seventy-five new watercolor illustrations, readers are reintroduced to the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Turtle, and all the other fabulously curious creatures that inhabit Alice’s imaginary universe. Alice, modern literature’s prototype of the wise child, looks squarely at this lopsided dream-world, and proclaims, “Stuff and nonsense!” Dominguez’s vivid depictions of Wonderland’s odd residents perfectly complement the utterly logical yet blatantly absurd content of Carroll’s hallmark tale.

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English.) "Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!"

Alice and all her many friends will never be forgotten so long as books for children are published. The fascinating adventures of this timeless little girl as she plunges down the rabbit-hole, shrinks and grows, meets the pack of cards and the chess pieces -- should be read regularly by all ages for their totally original fantasy, their humor, and their charm.

Publishing a newly illustrated edition of a children's classic is a risky undertaking: Is there really a need, for example, for another excursion down the rabbit hole with Alice? However, when the work is graced with Weevers's elegant watercolors, the answer is a resounding yes. Encountering the sublime cover painting, the reader senses instantly that here is no commonplace Alice : only slightly bedraggled, the plucky heroine paddles valiantly through the pool of tears, with stately birds and a solitary mouse in tow. In this volume Weevers ( The Hare and the Tortoise , Herbert Binns and the Flying Tricycle ) has produced his most sophisticated and lavishly detailed paintings to date. A magnificently liveried, haughty lobster sneers as he grooms fastidiously; a dolorous King of Hearts and his indignant consort preside at a tasty trial, heedless of the courtroom banner proclaiming Amor vincit omnia --love will certainly not conquer this pair. Rendered in a traditional style, unlike the surrealistic approach chosen by Anthony Browne in his recent edition of Alice , these illustrations are set amidst a treasure trove of Victoriana: Alice plummets past a dusty bell jar surrounded by crumbling leatherbound volumes, the Duchess perches on a Chinese oriental carpet beside a tufted leather footstool. This is an Alice to revisit again and again. Ages 8-up.

Gr. 4-6, younger for reading aloud. There is no end to the available editions of Alice, of course, but here is one worth having. It is in a nice big format, with an exquisite typeface, easy to read and to hold in the lap. It has a genial and erudite introduction by Leonard Marcus, with a bit of biography of Carroll and some Alice publishing history, but, most of all, there are unusual, engrossing illustrations. Morell has taken the original Tenniel images, placed them in collage with realia, and photographed the resultant construction in black-and-white. The artifact of the book is used to great effect: the hole the White Rabbit descends is cut into a large book; the Tenniel caterpillar and Alice peering over the mushroom's edge poke up from the pages of a book in a swirl of smoke; the tea party table is a big old book with a checkerboard cover. This edition illuminates the familiar story in ways that point up its essential, strange "magick."

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Grade 4 Up-- Edens has compiled and arranged illustrations from 25 editions of Alice in Wonderland published in the early to mid-1900s. The result is a fascinating look at a variety of illustrative styles. This is far less jarring than one might expect because the original illustrator, John Tenniel, has so strongly influenced his successors that their interpretations are often similar in design. In fact, the fascination in these pictures is the differing details--Alice's dress, her hairstyle, and her expressions tell much about the time period and the artist's viewpoint. Edens has also done a fine job of integrating the pictures with the text. He varies interest by utilizing full-page plates, half plates, vignettes, and even reducing some illustrations to fit the design so the book flows fairly well and these myriad illustrations blend into a whole rather than distract the eye. The reproduction is excellent. A must for collections with historical interest in children's literature and large libraries.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Karen K. Radtke, Milwaukee Public Library

Reader Michael Page offers a rollicking performance of the 1865 children's classics, which don't seem dated in the least in his skillful hands. Every character is presented with a distinctly different tone, pacing and inflection. His narration is gently expressive; his British accent perfectly in keeping with the setting and characters. Happily, he doesn't slavishly imitate the well-known voices from the Disney cartoon version; his interpretation is distinct and complete in itself. This is a first-class presentation. D.W.

Lewis Carroll (the pseudonym of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was a mathematics lecturer at Oxford University, but he is better known to the world as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-glass (1871), as well as The Hunting of the Snark (1876).

Height (cm) 8.3　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Width (cm) 7.3