I like this! I’m a sucker for anything related to Alice in Wonderland. This is a sequel of sorts – the protagonist Alyce is the granddaughter of the original Alice, who she thinks of as a peculiar old lady who tells all these outlandish stories. When Alyce accidentally intercepts Alice’s tea party invitation, she ends up in Wonderland herself, and meets the expected bunch of eccentrics, including some favourites from the original book.
The OG third-party sequel to the Alice books is Gilbert Adair’s brilliant Through the Needle’s Eye, which is a sequel to Through the Looking Glass. It’s a pitch-perfect pastiche – it could have been written by Carroll himself. Alice With a Why is different – it’s written for modern youngsters, so nods a bit towards more modern concerns. Grim reality intrudes, as Alyce’s much-loved father has died in the Great War. There is a bit more sadness in this book, as in this poignant passage where she tells her companion the Fox about her father:
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” the Fox said, and passed her a hanky.
“Thank you, but I’m not crying,” Alyce said before realising that she was.
As in the original, a lot of things that happen are either completely nonsensical, or follow a very peculiar logic. But overall the plot of Alice With a Why is much more conventional than the original. She is given a mission, which she manages to deal with in quite a clever way. The ending is much neater than the original books, which dissolve into utter chaos. But I think this book strikes the right tone, being a bit more modern but still written in a similar, somewhat old-fashioned voice. These days I don’t know many under-ten-year-olds, but if I did I would certainly recommend this book to them, and to anyone who is an Alice fan.
(And if you are an Alice fan, you must read Martin Gardner’s magnificent The Annotated Alice. I love that book so much I somehow have two copies.)