I have not written a blog post in quite a long time. I also haven’t released a new book in a long time either. It isn’t that I have not been writing, or formulating ideas to write. I have. But I started working at a new school three years ago, teaching K-8 art, and my writing time seemed to fade away…
This week, during the height of pandemic ‘lockdown’, however, I am having a virtual book launch. The book is True Confessions From Wonderland, (subtitled “Dispelling the Myths Perpetuated By That Riduclous Alice.) Here’s how the book came into being. While doing a school-wide novel study last year on the novel Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, I discovered a few certainties. 1.) Most of the staff had never read the book. 2.) Most of the students and staff really did not like the book. 3.) The book has a very Disney heavy association. At my school, we end each trimester of the school year with an exhibition night. We turn the halls of the school into a museum of what we learned during those 13 weeks. (When school is physically in sesssio of course.) There was a sea of blue dressed Alices, pink and purple cheshire cats, and so on. Since I had worked hard to discourage my art students from perpetuating the Disney images in their work (we did our exhibit under the theme Alice: the Pop Art edition) I asked myself why that image of Alice is what prevailed. Possibly because the movie made it so. And possibly because of the original illustrations by John Tennial. But I think its mostly becuase those images are the only ones we get, because Alice is never described at all in the book, as the entire story is completely from her sometimes muddled POV.
Which got me thinking…what of Carroll got the story wrong? What if the other characters could speak for themselves? Would they be anything at all like what Alice saw? Thus, True Confessions From Wonderland. Here’s how my version of Wonderland goes: 12 year old Maddy falls into the story and is asked by the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter to set the story straight. Following the plot line of the original she interviews them all from Hatter to Mock Turtle and discovers a world of characters very different from the ones she thought she knew. It’s roughly the same length as the original by design, and is hopefully appealing to the target age (8-13) but also witty and sophisticated to appeal to adult reader who either loved-or hated- the book.
If you are looking for a lockdown diversion, consider going to Amazon and checking it out at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1795371617 or on my website http://www.booksbylynnmurphy.com