Writing For Children: Lesson 1.

.Assignment 1: My Favourite Children's Storybook.

I cannot remember when I first read Alice In Wonderland, I think my parents and aunts and uncles may have read me the story or a version of it when I was still an infant, unable to read on my own. It seems to have always been with me, one of the cornerstones of my life. I used to collect different versions of the book, and I find it a sad comment on my current life that I could not find a single copy when I decided to start this assignment. For a while I thought I would have to postpone my study, disappointing myself in my wish to crack on, to make a beginning, but fortunately I remembered my new friend, the WorldWideWeb. Sure enough a google search swiftly revealed several on-line versions of Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. I chose one accompanied by Tenniell's original illustrations and dived in, back to the world so familiar to me.

To answer the question of what I thought when I first read it is difficult since the story has always been familiar to me, but I will try to explain why I loved it so much as a child. It was mad, zany, but always in a sensible way. Lewis Carroll played with the meanings of words and used ambiguity in a way that was absurd and yet always followed some sort of logical order. So while the reader has to swallow the idea of a large, talking white rabbit, with waistcoat and watch, it then follows logically that this rabbit will dive down a large rabbit hole, and since rabbits are supposed to live in holes, you then see shelves and cupboards with food and books on them. This mixing of the absurd with the familiar makes the story easy to follow and funny at the same time. I loved reading how Alice would try to be sensible and understand what was happening to her. Trying to work out if she is different or it is the place she is in that is different, by comparing herself to other girls she knows and then trying to remember her lessons to see if she is clever or not. These are things that I could understand as a child, and relate to, even though I knew that people don't change into someone else.
I loved the way people talked to each other, asking questions all the time and often being quite rude in return. Then there were the songs, the rhymes. Who could resist such gems as,

”How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!”

”How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gentle smiling jaws!” .

And of course,

“Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.”

Chorus
(In which the cook and baby joined):--

”Wow! wow! Wow!”

“I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!”

I can remember singing those to my brothers and sisters delighting in the naughtiness, when my life at that time allowed no other alternative than to be a good well behaved child. Maybe that is the key to why I loved the story at that age. The naughtiness and absurdity would never have been allowed in my real life, but were somehow fun in a book.
To move on to how I found the book when I read it today, some things have changed and others remain the same. I was relieved to find I still loved the story, was still happy to enjoy the writing and to savour the pace, turning pages slowly, knowing what is to come and still wanting to go there. Some times I found I was querying the words against my memory, funny how we trust our memories so highly, and yet I am reading a book I have not read for twenty years or more. Of course some of the words will be different to my memories. I had forgotten the mouse's tail. In the book, the words of the mouse's tale are arrnaged on the page to form the shape of a mouse tail against the blank paper. I think that was the very first time I ever came across the ides of using printed words on a page as a picture or to illustrate an emotion or feeling. And yet it is a technique I have used myself. For example I have written some words on one of my characters who is manic depressive, and when she is in her manic state I tried to illustrate by creating paragraphs in clumps, with gaps and positioning to indicate her disjointed thoughts and her tendency to head off at a tangent. I didn't remember Alice, but used the idea that was sparked so long ago. I also note how the author has used simple conventions to give extra meaning. He usually just writes that Alice 'said' this or 'said' that, however when she is talking to the queen, who shouts or screams her half of the conversation, she responds by shouting herself. Normally when I write I try to avoid the 'he said, she said' thing, but in this book it doesn't seem to cause any problems. So I still love the story and will have to hunt out my copies so I can hold it in my hands and read it properly.

Questions -

What is the subject matter?

An adventure into the absurd dream-world of a young girl.

How is the main character introduced?

She is described in the very first sentence, sitting by her sister, who is reading, feeling bored.

How is conflict, resolution and conclusion presented?
(Can you clearly find a beginning, middle and end to the story?)

The conflict is between Alice and her understanding of the normal day to day world she inhabits, and the wonderland in which she finds herself. The tale begins firmly rooted in the real world, with her sister sitting on a riverbank.
The resolution is in her understanding that she can speak her mind and trust her own judgement of what is nonsense. The middle is the journey she takes through Wonderland, meeting the various characters who live there.
The conclusion is when she wakes up and discovers that wonderland is a world of dreams only An ending that has been used many times since, in more media than the written word.
What is the overall setting for the story?
The book is set in Wonderland, a world of dreams, where reality bends at the whim of the dream. A country where rooms have tiny doors leading to beautiful gardens, where animals and objects talk, and what they say can be nonsensical, and where our heroine finds nothing is constant or to be relied on, as even her physical form can alter in the most curious ways.