Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (opens March 5) is the most talked-about movie since, well, since Avatar. And it seems to have spawned a mini-spree of Alice-related books in several genres.
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND By Lewis Carroll, illustration by Camille Rose Garcia, Collins Design, 159 pages, $19.99
Alice goes Goth as artist Camille Rose Garcia runs amok over Tenniel's original drawings, as still-blonde Alice features heavily-blacked eyes and tear-drop cheeks, the Cheshire cat sports a malicious grin, the Mad Hatter resembles Jack Nicholson as the Joker and the Queen of Hearts looks more like the Queen of the Night.
A IS FOR ALICE By George A. Walker, Porcupine's Quill, 62 pages, $12.95
Renowned wood-engraver Walker has compiled a charming Alice abecedarium, with snippets from Carroll's classic accompanied by engravings. Here's D is for Dormouse: " 'The dormouse is asleep again,' said the Hatter,/ and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose."
THE MYSTERY OF LEWIS CARROLL: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice in Wonderland By Jenny Woolf, St. Martin's, 326 pages, $33.99
Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was a secretive and complex man, revelling in puzzle, of which his life is not the least. His latest biographer finds him not guilty of active pedophilia, though his very Victorian penchant for photographing pre-pubescent girls such as Alice Liddell, sometimes in the nude, remains decidedly creepy.
ALICE I HAVE BEEN By Melanie Benjamin, Delacorte, 351 pages, $29.95
Continuing the current mania for novels in which writers attempt to imagine the inner lives of real people, we have an octogenarian Alice Liddell looking back over her life, the way in which her relationship with Carroll shaped it, and her subsequent adventures, and misadventures in fictional Realityland.