Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Softcover

English language

ISBN:
9780763620493
OCLC Number:
1023122432
3 stars (1 review)

Welcome back to a Wonderland that is as astonishingly new as it is joyously familiar. Helen Oxenbury, one of the world’s most acclaimed illustrators, brings her special brand of magic to the Lewis Carroll classic in a handsome volume boasting more illustrations than any other edition - called a "masterpiece" by Parents’ Choice. Her Wonderland is exuberant, contemporary, and lovingly created, with all the warmth, depth of emotion, humor, and acute observations of people and animals for which the artist’s work is so highly regarded. An elegant, textured cover with flaps makes this a beautiful gift book.

1 edition

Usually a fan of Oxenbury, but perhaps Tenniel has eaten my brain

3 stars

Look, illustrating Alice is hard. You're laboring in the shadow of Tenniel, and the comparison is going to be made. You can lean into the Tenniel iconography and add your own spin to it, as Disney did, or you can fight it tooth and nail. That's what Oxenbury's doing here, but she's working so hard to be Not Tenniel that she's forgetting to have any fun with it. Thus we have a Cheshire Cat that somehow "grins" without showing any teeth, playing-card people who just look like they're wearing playing cards, and weirdly sterile environments that seem terrified to include any imagery that isn't explicitly detailed in the text. Characters often float along with minimal background. Their expressions seem muted. If anything, it feels like Oxenbury is trying to bring a sort of naturalism to her illustrations here, which is, frankly, kind of a bonkers way of going about illustrating …