With her sharp skills of literary analysis, Faren Maddox takes a look at the word games Carroll plays in Wonderland and Looking Glass and why they’re deeper than the silly fun they appear to be on the surface.

It’s almost astonishing to me to think that Lewis Carroll wrote his works with an audience of children in mind, especially when one considers how intelligent they had to be to pick up on his word games. But I think Carroll did exactly what is now becoming popular in books today—he gave children credit for having a brain.

There are a lot of continuing themes in the playfulness of language in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The main idea at work is what words actually mean (as opposed to their common usage) and it creates a great deal of confusion for the character of Alice, leading to some of her problems of identity.

For one thing, Carroll was clearly not a fan of the rhymes children learn in school, because he exhibits a sort of glee in twisting them around. One of the first ways that Alice comes to know that Wonderland is far different from her own world is the way she is unable to recite them properly (i.e. “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat/How I wonder what you’re at”), and it leads to her believing that she has accidentally been transformed into one of her less intelligent classmates. Since she maintains an independent intelligence throughout, it may be inferred that Carroll is simply pointing out how foolish the rhymes were to begin with.

You can read the rest of this entry at FarenMaddox.com.

Nearly 60 years later, Disney has decided to revisit the world of Alice in Wonderland and put a new spin on it in Tim Burton’s film Alice.

For comparison, here’s the trailer for the original 1951 Alice in Wonderland movie.

Burton’s version of the film graces theaters this Friday, March 5th.

In celebration of Lewis Carroll week, our fellow book-geek Faren Maddox (of FarenMaddox.com) wrote an amazing review of Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

Insightful as always, Faren sheds some light on Carroll’s works and why they’re not the Disney-friendly version you saw as a kid.

How do you write a review for a timeless childhood classic? Is there any way to say what has not already been said, or speak about something that is not already known?

No. Not really. But I’m willing to bet that there are plenty of you out there who are in the same place I was just a short while ago. You’ve seen the old, animated, “Alice in Wonderland,” (the Disney taming of a tale), but have never actually sat down and tried to read the book.

But now that I’ve read the book, I can safely say there are quite a few things to tell you—things you may not already know.

The first thing you should know? How much you’re going to enjoy this book. By looking at the movies, you’re going to think it’s a mild children’s story or a weird acid trip, depending. But it’s neither. It’s an amazing romp through identity crises by way of word play.

Lewis Carroll (who is actually Charles Dodgson, but whom I refer to as Carroll because he published under that name) was clearly a man who loved the English language and had a lot of fun with it.

You can read the rest of Faren’s review here.

The popularity of Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland has created something you definitely don’t see everyday: A makeup kit dedicated to Alice in Wonderland.

Called “Alice in Wonderland Book of Shadows,” Urban Decay created a limited edition kit of eye shadows with Alice-themed names like “White Rabbit,” and so on.

You can check it out for yourself on the Urban Decay website.

Redwall fans everywhere can rejoice with the knowledge that The Sable Quean—the latest installment of the  Redwall series by Brian Jaques—is only weeks away from hitting bookstores.

We never had the opportunity to get into the Redwall series growing up, but from what we can tell from the synopsis and the book trailer, it looks good!

But for those of you Redwall fans out there, how do you think this book will compare to the others?

While it promises to be action-packed, do you  think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?

We absolutely love this!

Some fans of O’Reilly Media took it upon themselves to create a funny book cover generator where you can create your own funny book cover using O’Reilly cover images.

Need we say more? Create away! (Our creation can be seen above.)

(via Makezine.com)

If you don’t like sad movies, you might not want to watch the trailer for Dear John (based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks).

But, if you happen to be up for a teary-eyed moment, this trailer (and the book it’s based on) are sure to please.

In her newest book, In the Arms of Immortals, author Ginger Garrett tells a sweeping tale of the Black Death and how it causes one Sicilian village to “spill its guts” in more ways than one.

You can check out the description (via B&N) below:

The Black Death sweeps through a medieval Sicilian village…revealing old secrets, true character, and stunning spiritual realities.

When the Black Death [...] sweeps through a medieval Sicilian village, three women must face their true selves…and their eternal destinies.

In the time of the Black Death, when the faithful had no answers and the faithless had no hope…only the bravest dared cling to a silent God.

The folks at Cracked.com had an interesting photo contest called If Hollywood Decided to Give Everything a Gritty Reboot, where they challenged readers to give beloved books, movies, and TV shows a “gritty” reboot.

One of the pictures (it took 10th place, by the way), was of Charlotte’s Webb, the beloved book by E. B. White.

While they chose to “reboot” the movie poster of Charlotte’s Webb instead of the book cover, we think this just as easily can apply to the book…

And that is one children’s book we wouldn’t want to read.

This certainly is one of the weirdest (and coolest) weird reader gifts we’ve featured to date.

You take two naturally opposing forces (the Librarian and the action figure), and mix them together to create the hybrid pictured above. The results are quite… uh, awesome?

All in all, we love this action figure—we think it would make a great gift for any Librarian with a good sense of humor.

Truth be told, our main complaint about this action figure and its accessories is that there aren’t any C.S. Lewis books on that library cart. (Not that we can see, anyways.)

You can get this gem of an action figure (made by Accoutrements) over at Amazon.

If you liked this action figure, you might also like these famous author action figures as well.