1. A Short Summary of Lewis Carroll's
“Alice In Wonderland”
with the Original Illustrations by John Tenniel (1866)
On a hot summer day, Alice decided to take a walk in the fields
behind her house. She went accompanied by her elder sister and
her cat. They sat down to rest in the shade of a tree, where Alice's
sister gave her a surprise that she didn't like at all: a schoolbook!
Alice was turning the pages annoyed and bored because she
couldn't find a single picture in that book, when she suddenly heard a voice:
- I'm late! I'm late! - shouted loudly a white rabbit, dressed in a frock coat and
monocle, that passed running next to her.
- Where are you going, sir? - Alice asked, leaping up to her feet. But the animal kept
running.
Alice followed him. A little later she saw the rabbit jumping into a hole below a tree.
Alice went into it too and... she began to fall down what seemed to be a bottomless pit!
She was there, with a lot of things floating around: desks, books, lamps... When the
descent was over, she realised she was in a very strange place.
Down there she saw again the running rabbit, and continued following it. Meanwhile, she
noticed that that weird place was full of surprises. For example, she discovered that after
drinking the liquid in a bottle...she could turn small as a flea! And that after eating a
cookie... she could become as tall as a
giant!
She then met some garden flowers...
that didn't stop speaking (and that, by
the way, were rather bad-mannered)!
She also met a smiling cat, called the
Cheshire Cat, that used to disappear in
the moments of need, and a caterpillar
smoking a pipe and speaking only in
riddles, and a Mad Hatter and a March
Hare who invited her to have a cup of
tea in the middle of a forest... Well,
that really was a Wonderland!
Everything was very strange there, but the greatest surprise for Alice was to meet three
playing cards who were walking and talking while painting white roses in red!
- What are you doing? - Alice asked with curiosity.
- It was his fault! - answered the Five of Spades.
- That wasn't me!- said the Seven of Spades, looking at the third companion as to
accuse him.
- Don't look at me! - cried the Two of Spades, and explained to Alice that the white
roses were meant to be red... and they were painting them before the Queen of Hearts'
arrival: she couldn't accept this sort of mistake, and she would have the three...

2. beheaded! At that very moment the Queen arrived and, as expected, she started to
shout:
- Cut their heeeeeeeeeeead!
And the Queen's soldiers, which also were playing cards, took away the Two, the Five
and the Seven of Spades. Alice looked at them, scared. They were going to behead them!
But the King arrived and reassured her about it:
- Don't worry. They won't really cut their heads. It's just that my wife the Queen loves
to cry that order out!
The Queen then asked Alice to play cricket with her. Alice
liked cricket so much, but she had never seen playing it in such
a weird way: the clubs were upside-down flamingos, the balls
were tiny hedgehogs who turned themselves into small balls to
withstand the flamingos' strokes, and the hoops were some
other playing cards, curved in the shape of bridges. Alice tried
her best to win, but it was impossible to score points as Alice's
flamingo was flapping its wings trying to escape from her
hands, hedgehogs were moving away from the hoops every
time they got close to them, and the hoops were continuously
jumping here and there to prevent Alice to score points, and the
Queen to get angry and order again... to cut their heads!
The Queen of Hearts won the match, as everyone expected,
but she found another reason to get angry: the Jack of
Hearts had stolen some cakes to eat them. And in a
moment, a summary trial was set up. The King was the
impartial judge and the White Rabbit was the district
attorney, asking questions everyone to find out what had
really happened about the cakes. The ones who declared
were: the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Caterpillar, that
now was a pretty butterfly, the Cheshire Cat, that
disappeared in the air, and finally Alice. The King and the
White Rabbit started to ask questions to Alice, but she
didn't know what to say... so they finally declared her
guilty!
Alice tried to defend herself:: - That wasn't me! That wasn't
me! I'm not guilty! I'm innocent!
- Cut her heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeead! - the Queen of Hearts ordered.
The situation was turning really bad. Alice saw all the playing cards were getting closer
and closer to her... Luckily she had a good idea: she searched her pockets for some
crumbs of the cookie that had made her turn into a giant. Now she could then easily
knock the soldiers out, as easily as making a castle of cards fall. But Alice couldn't stop
growing......
…and woke up in the shade of the tree where she had fell asleep. Her sister was smiling
at her and the cat was purring, glad to feel the heat of the summer sun.
- I have been in Wonderland!- Alice murmured, not sure whether the dream was over or
not. And she looked around her, sure to see again, between the flowers, the White Rabbit.

3. Carroll, t Dreams”
Lewis Carroll, “the Cartographer of Dreams
(Daresbury, Cheshire 1822 – Guildford, Surrey 1898)
Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Ludtwidge Dodgson, was
born in the county of Cheshire, that was an authentic cat's heaven at
the time. Charles was the eldest of eleven brothers – eight boys and
three girls – that were all left-handed and with a stammer. At
fourteen, Charles enrolled in the Rugby school, home of the finest
British education and of the sport of the same name. But Lewis
Carroll did not like fetching or throwing rugby balls, and those
were bitter years for him.
The following years had the same background as Harry Potter's adventures: Lewis
studied at the Christ Church College, Oxford. There, Carroll didn't find the philosophers'
stone, but the white stone that brought light to his days. That was during a magic April
morning: “The three girls stood before me in the garden; we later became friends. I
marked that day with a white stone”. The three girls, whose names were Lorina, Alice
and Edith, were the daughter of dean Liddell. They always asked Lewis “Tell us a story”,
and that's how, during a walk on the banks of the river Thames, Alice in Wonderland was
born.
Other important works by Carroll are the sequel of Alice in Wonderland, called Through
the Looking Glass, Sylvia and Bruno and The Hunting of the Snark, this last one being a
senseless poem describing “with infinite humor, the impossible trip of an improbable
crew, to find an inconceivable creature”. Carroll was a deacon of the Anglican church, a
professor of mathematics (he dedicated many of his books to this discipline), and an
enthusiast photographer. He loved paradoxes and riddles, he traced the cartography of
dreams and showed the disturbing ambiguity of words, taking us to the limits of the
human reason and sense.
An Activity about Alice and its Author
Answer the following questions.
1. What did Alice see while studying under the shade of a tree?
2. What happened to Alice after drinking the liquid inside a bottle?
3. Why did the Queen of Hearts order to behead the three Spades?
4. How did Alice escape from judgement after being accused of stealing the cakes?
5. Make a list including at least ten of the strange characters (humans, animals, living
objects) met by Alice in Wonderland.
6. How many brothers and sisters did Lewis Carroll have?
7. All of them had something in common. What was it?
8. What was his main job?
9. Which country was he from?
10. Did Carroll write any other book, apart from Alice in Wonderland, about Alice's
adventures?