Youth literature week 2

Alice In Wonderland 


I had never read nor seen Alice In Wonderland ever before so this was my first encounter with the story of Alice In Wonderland. Although I did know Chesire Cat and the Mad Hatter but I got to know them from a reference made in a game I play. This goes to say how popular the story must be.

It might sound crazy but I actually got quite scared of the story of Alice In Wonderland. I usually am not one to get scared of anything but when reading Alice In Wonderland, a young person stranding in another, so to say, world, with different values and reasoning and rules that are completely unknown and foreign to me and the protagonist, made me scared because I didn't know what to expect at all. In this case the protagonist just had a ''go with the flow'' attitude and didn't think about anything as if she never had experienced any other world before ( the world with the rules and way of reasoning that I'm used to ) beside this, I think because I was totally unknown with this kind of storyline before it made me get scared because I totally got into the story and it seemed as if I was meeting al kinds of situations and unknown beings and didn't know what was expected of me. I just want to make it clear that the story made me get really scared because throughout I encountered all kinds of things that I was unknown with and that little girl just went ahead and did stuff without even thinking twice. After having read the story I did a little bit of research on it and found out that some critics say that the author wrote the book with theory of algebra on his mind because he is teaches that. Then it all made sense to me and I think the author did a really great job to put us (the reader ) in a world with completely different values. And the effect that this experience had on me can be concluded in one word : horrifying.

Theme and Genre
I am confinced that there are more themes to this book than one. Those themes being: growing up and a different world. Throughout the story you have Alice who is completely unknown with values and reasoning which makes her be all openminded and accepting about all the situations and as she nears the end of the book she tends to get accustomed with all the different values in the 'mad world' and the moment she becomes able to manipulate these values to her own benefit makes her wake up to the real world and in my opinion this makes Alice have grown up a little bit because she got to cope with all kinds of crazy values and rules ( which one could compare to values and customs in the real world). Like I mentioned before, Alice In Wonderlands made me experience a perspective whilst being in another world, personally I think the author has done a great job in doing so. The age for this book can be a bit tricky because a: either you read this book as an openminded person ( child) or b: as an adult, which makes you enjoy different aspects of this book than rather the surface of the adventure which Alice goes through. I don't know what kind of effect it has on other people but I'd rather not have had read this scary book, I'd say there is no age for this book as long as you  can read, this book can be meant for you to read, because the content you understand matches the content you can comprehend at that age and the content that you are able to comprehend is not harmful.

In Class
In class we had also discussed the books every group had read by the following points that I can remember : what are your thoughts on the book, to what age would you recommand  the book , what themes did you make out. Furthermore we also discussed the algebra part of the book which the teacher brought up I think or the guy with long hair and glasses which is new in our class, he seemed quite knowledgeable on the book.