22 August 2010

Alice in Wonderland: Hidden Objects



Warlex has created an Alice in Wonderland game for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that features Alice in Wonderland imagery but is predominantly an eye-spy type game. The icon that shows up on your device's screen is a winking Cheshire Cat, above.

There is a free ad-based version in the App Store, as well as an ad-free version that costs $0.99.

I recently downloaded the free game for iPod Touch, and some of the items to find are easy, and some of them are quite obscured (or the search terms are ambiguous), but there are hints available. Not all of the search terms are available for you to see at once, due to the small screen -- I am not sure if it is executed the same way for iPad. The images are basically digital collages, and sometimes you see Wonderland-inspired items, but more often you do not. The relation to Alice in Wonderland is rather tenuous.

The current version is rated 2 stars in iTunes, and I believe that is a fair rating as it is neither particularly inspired nor quite aesthetic. The Google-sponsored ads were at first distracting, but were easy to tune out after a little while. The free version should have been a light or trial version, rather than an ad-sponsored one.


  

20 August 2010

A bibliophile decorator’s dream come true

This is a really fun idea for a poster!  The poster measures 20 by 24" or  51 by 61cm, I wonder if it is large enough to read the text!

At a gallery in Italy several years ago, I remember seeing a handwritten manuscript in tiny tiny print of Dante's entire Divine Comedy -- that you had to use a magnifying glass to read it!  (I was able to verify that all three canticles ended in "stelle.")  This Alice print reminds me of this, but it seems much more practical.  The Moby Dick poster looks pretty cool, too!

You can find the poster here, thanks to the Holiday Matinee's write-up.

Postertext.com has the rest of the literary posters.

11 June 2010

Alice in Zombieland



Since Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has come out, there has been fervent re-writing of the classics to include zombies, werewolves, and sea monsters. I have not actually read any of these books (full disclosure), and am not against genre bending (horror and children's book, for example), but once an originally creative idea becomes kitschy, I am afraid that it shows little reverence to both Alice and zombie folklore.

The book is devoid of images -- parodies of John Tenniel's artworks could have been put to good use, and the two reviews on Amazon are poor, if this is any further indication.

As zombie expert, and recent reviewer of Survival of the Dead noted, "[Z]ombies used to mean something. [N]ow it's like counterfeit, there's so much glutting the market, it dilutes the real deal." He went on to say, "[I] hope the amish don't befall the same fate"

One would think with the Queen of Hearts (Nikolas Cook's Dead Red Queen?) running the show, all zombies in her path would lose their heads!

09 June 2010

Thru The Mirror

From wikipedia:

Thru the Mirror is a Mickey Mouse cartoon short film produced by Walt Disney Productions, released by United Artists in 1936. In this cartoon short, Mickey has a Through the Looking-Glass-type dream that he travels through his mirror and enter a topsy-turvy world where everything is alive. While there, he engages in a Fred Astaire-type dance number with a pair of gloves and a pack of cards, until the cards chase him out of the bizarre world.

08 June 2010

Wonderland Shop Sale

Now through June 16th, my etsy shop is having a sale, $1 off items $2 or more, and $2 off items $8 or more!

If you write "Road Trip" in the note to seller, I will also send you an Alice magnet!*

Here are some cute items in my shop right now:









Sale is made through PayPal reimbursement, which I will issue upon receiving payment, before the item ships. Item(s) must be paid for by 11:59pm EST on June 16th. You can use this converter to determine what time that would be for you!

* This sale is being done right before an epic road trip, hence the code words!

31 May 2010

Clara in Blunderland


From Wikipedia:

Clara in Blunderland is a novel by Caroline Lewis (pseudonym for Edward Harold Begbie, J. Stafford Ransome, and M. H. Temple), written in 1902 and published by William Heinemann of London. It is a political parody of Lewis Carroll's two books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The book was followed a year later with a sequel, Lost in Blunderland.


It is critical of the Second Boer War in which Clara represents Leader of the House of Commons Arthur Balfour. A number of other notable British politicians are identified in the book. The Red Queen is Joseph Chamberlain, the Duchess is Robert Cecil, Crumpty-Bumpty is Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Walrus is William Vernon Harcourt, the Dalmeny Cat is Archibald Philip Primrose, and the Caterpillar is a young Winston Churchill.



The book features 40 drawings after the originals by John Tenniel which were drawn by journalist J. Stafford Ransome, credited as "S.R.".

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The full text of the book is available on Google Books.

15 May 2010

Alice Tattoos

Inspired by contrariwise.org (itself a Lewis Carroll reference!), here are a few pictures of Alice-in-Wonderland-themed tattoos!





To see more Alice-themed tattoos, check out contrariwise.com's Lewis Carroll tag!

01 May 2010

Record Tripping

A fun flash game uses a record of the first few chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a predominant component of the game.  It also features many cute storybook animals!  Play it at Recordtripping.com.




24 April 2010

Frame Game

This one is pretty easy, but one of our favorite books was featured in USA Weekend's frame game this week!


There is another children's book featured this week, check out their site.

 

12 April 2010

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Stickfiguratively Speaking) by Jamison Odone

I just heard about this new book that came out in March, haven't gotten my hands on it, but would be interested to know what other think.  It looks really fun, maybe a bit sassier than Carroll's, but from the Amazon preview, Alice's speech seems to be the same.  Here are some pictures via the web and screen shots from the preview, I like the composition of the text and images on the page, less of a separation between picture and book!







You can read the author/illustrator's blog at Jamison Odone's Wordpress.