WGLT interviews me about Alice in Wonderland's 150th anniversary

Thanks to Judy Valente for putting together a smart, charming piece about the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Judy has done so many interesting and intriguing radio pieces for WGLT. Whenever she has interviewed me, it has been a good experience and she always makes me sound much better.

Here's a link to the interview. https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2015/10/alice-wonderland-turns-150/WGLT's Charlie Schlenker took this photo of me and aa selection of Alice books. 

How Lewis Carroll revolutionized children's literature

"Lewis Carroll did a lot to revolutionize the field of children's literature," Jan Susina noted. "In the 19th century, most stories for kids were very moralistic or industructive. Carroll's Alice tales were pure fantasy, fun and entertainment.  Children and adults alike loved the stories, and their popularity and commercial success helped to legitimize children's literature as an important and marketable genre."

That quotation is from me in the article "The Importance of Alice" by Eric Jome that was recently published in American Conceirge Magazine.  Thanks to Eric for interviewing me and writing the feature about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and how I link the classic book to contemporary trends in children's literature and culture.  Of course, we discussed in detail the 2010 Alice film directed by Tim Burton, but I also talked about Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Beatrix Potter, and Mark Twain. Download the .pdf to see how they all fit together.

The Illinois State University English Department has featured the article in its "In the News" website page.  Thanks for that recognition.

Lewis Carroll's annotator

While teaching Alice's Adventures in Wonderland this week in ENG 370: History of Children's Literature, I am Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (Norton, 1999)encouraging the students to read an interview I did with Martin Gardner (link is to .pdf).  Gardner is, in many ways, a modern twin to Lewis Carroll.  He's a mathematician, puzzle-maker as well as a story teller and magician.  The interview that I wrote for Five Owls, a periodical on children's literature, focused on Gardner's classic books: The Annotated Alice, More Annotated Alice, and Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition.

In the interview, Gardner revealed that he didn't initially like the Alice books because when he was young he found them scary.  When he was in his 20s and a mathematician, he picked up Alice's Adventures because he was familiar with Carroll as a mathematician.  Curiously, Gardner, like Carroll, also became famous for writing puzzles and math games for children.  Gardner also wrote a famous, long-running column for Scientific American and is the author of more than 70 books, including some fantasies for children.  And was a genuinely nice person to interview.

Added March 2:  Entertainment Weekly as a piece about Alice references in Lost.