MacGougan at Large

Notes on Children's Books for Grown-Ups - 3

Alice in Wonderland

I was never really comfortable with Wonderland. For one thing, if you find a world down a rabbit hole, shouldn’t it be underground? And not just theoretically underground, but really underground, in carved-out spaces with artificial light sources. And don’t get me started on whether it makes sense to pass through a mirror.

Beyond the logistics, there was also a feeling that Wonderland wasn’t wonderful. It was an unhappy, unsettling place, teetering on the brink of being a nightmare. It never felt to me like a place for kids. To the extent that there was any sense of whimsy about the place, I had a vague sense that it was full of inside jokes for grown-ups. 

So the MacGougan Judgment on this one is that the Alice books are not children’s books. They are instead very imaginative, fever-dream books for grown-ups.

In fairness, they were written back in the Victorian Era, a time when children were thought of as simply small people - not much good for carrying heavy loads, but potentially useful when small hands were needed in a factory. (Or something along that line. It was long ago, and I was young at the time.) 

The pictures, though, remain worth the price of admission. A fat cat that disappears, leaving only a smile. A goofy pair of bulbous twins. Playing card royalty using flamingos to play croquet.

And the notion of a parallel world has become a staple of actual children’s books. Oz and Narnia and Never-Never Land and all the rest might actually have been born from the fact that their authors wanted something more from Wonderland than Lewis Carroll was able to provide.