(Blog Post #16) - Alice
I still remember the heavy weight of that oversized book in my nine-year-old hands. It looked like a standard bedtime story, the kind with big, colorful illustrations that promised a quick escape. Back then, my brain tangled up the vibrant Disney imagery with those iconic late-1800s black-and-white sketches and the separate color edition that Lewis Carroll had authorized as a separate color edition for younger readers, Alice. I thought I would breeze through it in an afternoon. Instead, the pages kept coming, a deceptively long labyrinth that completely hooked me. I lived inside that wonderland for days.
Years later, during college finals, I found myself chasing that same rabbit hole. When the academic pressure turned into a never-ending cold sweat, I would flee to the campus children’s library. There was a strange comfort in countering a massive, real-world stressor with the calculated, surreal nonsense of Wonderland.
Only this time, I wasn’t just reading the story; I was pulling the annotated versions from the shelves, losing myself in the footnotes of Carroll scholars. It is fascinating how a seemingly simple children's book carries the weight of a Shakespearean text. Seeing the endless, valid ways people re-create and interpret Alice makes me realize it’s not just a story from my childhood. It is a living, breathing puzzle box. Sitting on the floor of that quiet library, surrounded by decades of literary analysis, the anxiety of my upcoming exams always seemed to just drift away.
Now, years have slipped by, and coffee table book versions of The Annotated Alice have earned a permanent, prominent spot in my living room. They’re heavy and familiar, acting as visual anchors to different versions of myself.
When I look at them today, I don't just see a classic story. I see a timeline of my own life. I see the nine-year-old girl wide-eyed under the covers, the exhausted college student seeking a sanctuary, and the adult I am now, still fascinated by the endless layers of the human imagination. Wonderland never really leaves you.
