02/29/2016
Reader Reynolds buoyantly leads listeners down the rabbit hole and into the topsy-turvy world of Carroll’s Wonderland. When the young Alice follows a waistcoat-wearing rabbit holding a pocket watch, she finds herself in a fantastical world of talking mice, disappearing cats, hookah-smoking caterpillars, fish-headed footmen, and babies who turn into pigs. She shrinks smaller than a mouse and grows tall as a tree, participates in a mad tea party, plays croquet using flamingos for mallets, and runs afoul of the ill-tempered Queen of Hearts, whose cry of “Off with their heads!” seems to be the answer to most anything. It is a madcap, nonsensical entertainment, and Reynolds leaps into this tale’s telling with enthusiastic aplomb. Fully embracing the material, Reynolds delivers the author’s whimsical prose, poetry, and quirky characters with just the right touch of theatricality: bigger than life, but not completely over-the-top. It is a fine-tuned, enjoyable performance that allows the wonder of Wonderland to shine. (Dec.)

This year, that curious, hallucinating heroine Alice, friend of Cheshire cats and untimely rabbits, is turning 150 years old…And what a perfect match, in tone and whimsy, found in Rifle Paper Co.’s Anna Bond.”—Vanity Fair
 
“Publishers are having a creative field day with stunningly beautiful new covers—and lovely insides, too, in the case of Puffin’s whimsical Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, illustrated by Rifle Paper Co.’s Anna Bond.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“Chic…The pretty face of Anna Bond’s Alice looks continually astonished, and even in the scene where her neck grows freakishly serpentine, the heroine remains comely. Elegant and unthreatening, Ms. Bond’s pictures abound with so many flowers and curling vines that Wonderland seems a much nicer place than perhaps we remembered.”—Wall Street Journal
 
“150 years after Alice in Wonderland was published, Anna Bond, the creative director of stationer Rifle Paper Co., draws a whole new tea party in this deluxe hardcover edition.”—New York Magazine’s The Cut
 
“In this beautiful, oversized, hardcover anniversary edition—with the complete, unabridged text—readers will fall in love all over again with the classic tale of the girl who fell down the rabbit hole. Illustrator Anna Bond, of gift and stationery brand Rifle Paper Co., applies her stylish, whimsical touch and distinctive color palette to Alice and her friends, from the inviting jacket and the case-cover art beneath it to the original endpapers and the superb full-color interior illustrations, large and small.” —Shelf Awareness
 
“This year marks the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s beloved classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Commemorate the occasion with a deluxe hardcover edition of the tale from Puffin Books, available Oct. 27. The new book is re-illustrated with vibrant, whimsical designs by Anna Bond of Rifle Paper Co., for a one-of-a-kind look at Alice’s imaginative journey.”—American Profile

For A Is for Alice:

'Each image offered here provides evidence of its creation; there is a reminder, with each turn of the page, of the hand and thought that guided each groove. Walker's ability to impress such great detail (as in the grain of both the fur of the Cheshire Cat, and the branch upon which he is perched) in a print made with woodblocks is remarkable.... At the heart of this book is the art of the book, pages kissed by poetic samples of Carroll's writing and bound using artisan techniques onsite at The Porcupine's Quill headquarters. It is a high-quality, collectible edition in which fans of the Alice stories, bibliophiles, and young readers will delight.

[Steadman's drawings] are still remarkably fresh and unique.

Ferocious Steadman spin.

Sophisticated humor

Alice as you've rarely seen her... fun for all ages... full of the wit and wisdom Carroll originally gave us.

Don't count on a bookful of sweet, charming etchings of the shrinking golden girl; this is a somewhat less flattering Alice than the one we've come to know and expect. In over 40 pen and ink illustrations, this Wonderland is more tempestuous; of greater, grittier (and funnier) distortion... when dangerous satirists like Steadman exercise their imaginations and lyric, delirious pens in the slivers and shards of a distorted world — look out.

Explosive ink drawings... acidic whimsies splash across pages, bringing dear Alice a newly stimulating cup of tea.

Carroll's hall-of-mirrors children's tale and Steadman's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" style make for an eerily perfect fit.

Pair[s] a perpetually suspicious Alice with peculiar creatures that well warrant her chariness.

For A Is for Alice:

'Each image offered here provides evidence of its creation; there is a reminder, with each turn of the page, of the hand and thought that guided each groove. Walker's ability to impress such great detail (as in the grain of both the fur of the Cheshire Cat, and the branch upon which he is perched) in a print made with woodblocks is remarkable.... At the heart of this book is the art of the book, pages kissed by poetic samples of Carroll's writing and bound using artisan techniques onsite at The Porcupine's Quill headquarters. It is a high-quality, collectible edition in which fans of the Alice stories, bibliophiles, and young readers will delight.

— Patty Comeau

10/15/2015
Academic audiences will need little persuasion to see this volume as a relevant addition to any collection not already holding a copy of the 1969 Maecenas Press edition of the same work. However, general readers will find much to contemplate here, as some may still see Dalí as the "melting clock guy" and will be surprised to find that these gestural, high-energy gouaches were painted by the same artist who produced all of those finely wrought oil paintings with their asymmetrical use of volumes of sky and sand. Unlike more straightforward pairings of literature with surrealism, such as Max Ernst's illustrations for René Crevel's Babylon, the images accompanying Carroll's text do not so much explicate the story as extend it, providing both a narrative-inspired and narrative-independent dream sequence that simultaneously meanders among and augments the text's many symbols. The introduction by Burstein (president emeritus, Lewis Carroll Soc. of North America) and Thomas Banchoff (emeritus, Brown Univ.) provides a valuable grounding in the artist's interests and obsessions at the time the gouaches were created. VERDICT A worthy purchase for public and academic libraries.—Jenny Brewer, Helen Hall Lib., League City, TX