Knight Letter Review

Thanks to Claire Imholtz for her  review of The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature in Winter 2010 issue of The Knight Letter, which is The Newsletter of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.  She concludes that it's a "most informative, enlightening, and highly recommended book, an important addition to the literature of general Carrollian readers and academics."  That was generous of her and I appreciate her thorough review and generally positive notes.

I have been in touch with editors at Routledge, the book's publisher, and may have more positive news about it soon.  I'll post more info when it's available.

Mary Blair's "It's a Small World"

Mary Blair's artwork and creative ideas for Disney are legendery.  She had a modernistic, more abstract vision that Walt Disney appreciated but was very different from the drawings in his animated films that are rounder, softer in town and cuter, in a different way.  Blair is so revered at Disney that she is lauded in a special section of Disneyland's museum area as a Creative Innovator.  She's in a hall of luminaries that includes astronauts, inventors, politicians, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney and others.

A chapter in my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, has a section critically analyzing a book recently published by Disney that uses Mary Blair's conceptual art for Disney's Alice in Wonderland film along with a text loosely adapted from Lewis Carroll's by children's author Jon Scieszka.  Here's a link to a presentation, with images, based on that chapter.

For this blog on our Disneyland trip, I am posting photos of the "It's a Small World" ride to show what it looked like during the Christmas 2010-2011 season.  The music had been changed to an amalgam of the original "Small World" tune along with Christmas carols.  The dolls and scenery within the ride had been decorated for Christmas to reflect the different culture's Christmas, or end of the year, celebrations. 

A panorama of "It's a Small World" at night

Floating along the front of the ride, while going into the ride buildingThe clock area where the dolls come out and walk around.

Floating into the ride during the day

The ride during the day. It's much whiter and doesn't have the same presence within the park as it does at night.

Inside the ride the colors are bright, the dolls look rather cute, slightly dated but still charming and over the top.

The music is constantly playing, a little like treacle. Note the poinsettias and other holiday decorations

Just happy to be in front of "It's a Small World"

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Review of Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature

Just wanted to mention that I have made a .pdf of Dorothy Clark's review of my book, The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature.  I appreciate her positive review in The Lion and the Unicorn. She writes, "The opportunity to learn more--to be startled by facts and surprising pieces of information and perception--is exactly what Susina provides in this capacious, remarkable book that has broad appeal to nonacademics, scholars, and Carroll specialists. It is a text that generates delight, enthusiasm, and wonder."  Here's a link to the .pdf.

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.

Remembering Martin Gardner

I was saddened to learn of the death of Martin Gardner. He was a polymath with an infinite curiosity.  Like Martin Gardnermany children's literature scholars, I knew him best as the the compiler of the magnificant The Annotated Alice which was first published in 1960.  His book has gone through multiple editions including The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (1999).  

The Annotated Alice is a amazing compedium of all things Alice in which Gardner provides the text of the two Alice books along with citations and references to the the texts.  It is essential reading for anyone interested in a better understanding of the Alice books.  It has probably introduced more readers to a critical understanding of the Alice books than any other scholarly text.  It is without a doubt the best starting point for any reader who wants a better and more critical understanding of the Alice books and Lewis Carroll.  It the book that I encourage my students to begin their research in Alice.  To re-confirm The Annotated Alice was featured in the last season of Lost. Jack read the book in two different universes.

The Annotated Alice is a true print hypertext and was easily adapted into an eletronic version as well.  The popularity of The Annotated Alice inspired the publication of a number of other annotated versions of classic children's texts. But The Annotated Alice was the first and remains the best of the lot, although Michael Patrick Hearn's magnificant The Annotated Wzard of Oz, first published in 1973 and like Gardner's volume has gone through several editions is a close second. Gardner was originally planning on compiling The Annotated Wizard Oz, when he met Hearn, he gracefully stepped aside to allow the younger Hearn complete the task.

I was fortunate to be able to interview Martin Gardner for the journal, The Five Owls, through the efforts of my friend, Mark West, a children's literature scholar who teaches at the University of NC- Charlotte.  Mark and I drove up from Charlotte to visit Gardner in his home in Henderson, NC, in the fall of 1998. 

Meeting with Gardner was a amazing afternoon.  I don't ofen have  the opportunity to spend the day with a genius and Gardner was certainly that.  Although I knew him primarily for his work on Lewis Carroll, that was just one of his many interests.  It turned out he never really cared for Wonderland, preferring the fantasy of L. Frank Baum.  Gardner would help put back into print with his thoughtful introductions many of Baum's novels  that were published by Dover.  But what attracted him to Carroll was their mutual interest in recreational mathematics. One of Gardner's earlier jobs was being the compiler of the puzzle page for the children's magazine, Humpty Dumpty.

Gardner is perhaps best known for this long running Mathematical Games Column that appeared in Scientific American.  In this column and the many collections based on his column, Gardner would, as Carroll did in  A Tangled Tale, Pillow Problems, and The Game of Logic  provide readers with mathematical puzzles, paradoxes, and entertainments.  For those readers interested in this aspect of Carroll's career, I would strongly encourage them  to read Gardner's  The Universe in a Handkerchief: Lewis Carroll's Mathematical Recreations, Games, Puzzles and Word Plays  (1996).

Like Carroll, Gardner was a true man of letters and published some 80 books during his lifetime.  He would become curious in a topic, research, and then publish a book.  Douglas Hofstadter, the author of Godel, Escher, and Bach  (1979), has called Gardner, "one the great intellects produced in this country in this century." Hofstadter is correct, but in addition to being brillant, Garnder was also generous and kind.

Spending the day with Gardner, was for me as "a golden afternoon," which is how Carroll described the day The Annotated Alice, as it appeared in the television series Lost in March 2010that he first told Alice Liddell and her sisters the oral version of Wonderland.  We talked, drank tea, and he showed me his library, and his work office. When I entered his office, I was astonished. There I saw an old fashion writing desk, which allows the writer to stand while doing his composing.  This is how Gardner wrote which is  the same way the Carroll composed.  In that moment, I realized that the reason that Gardner has such insights and understanding of  Carroll is that his own life and thought process echoed that of the famous children's writer and mathematican.  Both were infinitately curious and imaginative.  It was the closest I have ever been to meeting Carroll. 

I wrote up the interview in the article "Conversation with Martin Gardner: The Annotator of Wonderland," published in the Jan./Feb. 2000 issue of The Five Owls.  

There was a thoughtful obituary of Martin Gardner published in the May 23, 2010 issue of the The New York Times, but I thought some readers might want to read my interview with Gardner.  He will be greatly missed, but his work endures.