The Looking Glass Wars (Looking Glass Wars #1) (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

by Frank Beddor

Overview

When she is cast out of Wonderland by her evil Aunt Redd, young Alyss Heart finds herself living in Victorian Oxford as Alice Liddell and struggles to keep memories of her kingdom intact until she can return and claim her rightful throne.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781417787449
Publisher:	Perfection Learning Corporation
Publication date:	04/04/2019
Series:	Looking Glass Wars Series , #1
Edition description:	THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Frank Beddor spent three years researching the details of Alyss' world before he wrote even one word of his trilogy. He is fiercely committed to getting the truth out there. The producer of the hit comedy There's Something About Mary, Frank lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Editorial Reviews

Alyss Heart can't stand that "master of fantasy" bunk; she knows that Lewis Carroll was nothing more than an incompetent reporter. After she generously shared her Wonderland experiences with this fledgling author, he totally botched the retelling, even mangling her name. Alyss, however, refuses to merely grouse; she and royal bodyguard Hatter Madigan decide to make another emergency excursion down the rabbit hole, opening our eyes to parallel realms that prim Rev. Dodgson never imagined. A refreshing take on a Victorian classic.

Narrator Doyle brings to life this fanciful re-imagining of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The premise has young Alyss Hart, heiress to the Wonderland throne, chased from the "queendom" in a bloody coup mounted by her despotic Aunt Redd. Alyss escapes through a magical pool to Victorian London. There, no one will listen to her story except for Charles Dodgson (aka Carroll) who publishes his own take. A theater-trained actor, Doyle artfully animates a large and diverse cast of fantasy and real-life characters. He's especially menacing as the murderous Aunt Redd, each high-pitched syllable dripping with malice. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Doyle quietly captures the resignation in Alyss's tender voice as she grows older in exile. For the duty-driven royal bodyguard Hatter Madigan, he colors his delivery with a determined stoicism as he seeks his missing charge. Doyle also navigates the social echelons of 19th-century England-from street urchins to palace guards to princes. In some exchanges, the vocal residue of one character bleeds into the voice of another. But that is a minor quibble. Doyle juggles an eclectic and other-worldly ensemble, never letting anything hit the ground. Ages 9-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 9 Up
Frank Beddor's clever novel (Dial, 2006) puts Lewis Carroll's heroine—along with her loony, puzzle-riddled world—into a new and wholly satisfying frame. In this version, most of Alyss Heart's family and friends are ruthlessly killed by her evil Aunt Redd. Alyss escapes through the Pool of Tears, which is actually a portal between worlds, and winds up in Victorian England and is renamed Alice. At first, the child tries to tell ordinary humans about her world and the power imagination actually effects in Wonderlandia, but they gently chide her for telling stories. She believes that she's found a sympathetic ear in a young Oxford don who is a friend of her adopted family, but he turns her story into the travesty we all know as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Meanwhile, Hatter Madigan, a member of Wonderlandia's Millinery, who also escaped through the Pool, searches for Alyss across continents and time, until he finds her more than a dozen years later. Back home in Wonderlandia, the few who have escaped evil Redd's soldiers plot to retake the land. Gerard Doyle reads with asperity and speaks the copious puns without any added slyness. Fans of Carroll's stories will flock to this and those who have managed to miss that less violent classic can get to it while waiting for the next volume in this exciting and humorous trilogy.
—Francisca GoldsmithCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Alice in Wonderland gets an update in this first installment of a planned trilogy. Princess Alyss, driven out of her Wonderland kingdom by her evil aunt, Redd, suffers years of exile in Victorian England before her dedicated bodyguard, Hatter Madigan, finds her. Dragged back to the home she feared she had only imagined, it is now up to Alyss to rally her troops, drive out the usurper and claim her throne. Can she survive assassination attempts by the vicious Cat with nine lives, a spy amongst her faithful followers, a trek across the Chessboard Desert to Redd's fortress at Mount Isolation and a duel of White vs. Black Imagination? Penned by the producer of There's Something About Mary, it's clear that this version will make the transition to the big screen, as the book reads more like a screenplay than a novel. The action moves swiftly from one complex scene to the next; there is minimal character development and opportunities for rich detail are tossed away all too often in favor of simply moving the story forward. One can only hope it translates well to the screen. (Fantasy. 12-15)

Kirkus Reviews