Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass,   ISBN:9781591090366

Customer Rating: 

Don't buy the Kindle edition hoping to see the wonderful illustrations described in the product information. The Kindle edition is text only!

Customer Rating: 

I love Alice in Wonderland. I've been reading it since I was a small child, hence I can honestly say that whoever retyped this for the Kindle did a shoddy (my peers would say "half-assed") job. Oh, it's readable, don't get me wrong. But if we'd bought this as a paperback, there would be an outcry, so why not shout out one for the eBook crowd? Shame on you!

There are tons of typos. The quotation marks are in that cheap ASCII nearly-sideways type that makes you blink more than once until your eyes adjust. Italicized words jumped between actual italics to underscores before italicized words (e.g., I will prosecute _you_). John Tenniel's illustrations are non-existent (oh, the horror!!). But my biggest complaint, though, is the presentation of the poetry. In fully-justified, unpunctuated paragraphs. Are you serious, Kindle publishers?!?

I got my first taste of things to come with "The Mouse's Tale" (Fury said to a mouse that he met in the house...), usually written in a fun, swirly format with decreasing font size. (You can see the original at [...]). I realize this would have been difficult to redo in the Kindle format, especially when the user is given the option to make the font bigger or smaller at will. But at least put it in stanza format! I tried to reproduce the result of the attempt, but Amazon's comment box reformats everything, so I'll try to demonstrate:

Fury (huge gap) said (huge gap) to a mouse That he
(huge gap) met (huge gap) in the (huge gap)house Let us both
go to (huge gap) law, I will (huge gap) prosecute you.

It's the worst example of full-justification allowable - the humongous gaps between words, no punctuation, three or four words per line...and so forth. Making the text bigger or smaller made it worse.

The rest of the poetry is in plain old paragraph format, with punctuation thrown in haphazardly or missing altogether. In "Through the Looking Glass," consider the presentation of "The Walrus and The Carpenter."

The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low; And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said To talk of many things Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--And whether pigs have wings.

Readers might find this a little thing, but I'm sorry, this just bothered the hell out of me.

I guess I should have expected it. I only paid 99 cents for this version, and you get what you pay for. And for God's sake, don't fall for the "free full versions" out there that were typed by "scholars" and available on the web for nothing - they're worse yet! So I give this 3 stars - a wonderful story brought low by lazy copy-editing.

Honestly, publishers, if you're going to redo a classic for the Kindle: (1) Include the original artwork, (2) format it correctly so it resembles the original hard copy as much as possible, and (3) spell-check it, for crying out loud. Don't make Kindle owners wonder what other crap is in store that will make us sorry we bought the thing and just reach for our old paperbacks instead.

Customer Rating: 

The Kindle combined edition of Alice['s Adventures] in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass described here [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0011U42V6/ref=yml_dp ] has neither the Tenniel illustrations nor the annotations mentioned in the description. As you can get the books for your Kindle for free, it's not worth getting the combo - even for 99 cents - without these features. That seems rather the point of purchasing it. (It was for me, anyway.)

Customer Rating: 

Alices' adventures in wonderland and through the looking glass written by Lewis Carroll and is illustrated by John Tenniel is a story that has lived on and is enjoyed by both young and old. The original book was an immediate classic success for people young and old to read.Carroll's sense of absurdity in his humour and his amazing gift for games of logic and language have made this book an enduring dream legacy of what is possible to happen in a persons mind. This is a story about Alice and growing up and what is lost for her in doing so. Alice dreams of a world where she doesn't belong to and where what is true in her real life isn't necessarily true anymore. The story begins when Alice follows the frantically delayed white rabbit down a black hole into the magical world of wonderland, where she meets a variety of some bizarre creatures some mythical creatures and some downright illogically wrong creatures. There is no linear path to life in wonderland where one event will lead seamlessly to another adding meaningful experience upon experience, instead life for her is made up of series of oftentimes unrelated events, by conversations you never fully understand while others you can't reason with at all in a completely upside down unpredictable world,that is always ever changing. Carroll's way with words has stood the test of time. His use of characters such as the mad hatter and the jabberwocky all have added to the simplistic colorful nature of his story in its a true grandeaur of a masterpiece that will live on for generations to come for readers reading it. Characters that keep you wondering for days on what they exactly are ? Do they belong in our world truly or are they a instead a collection of mixed creatures that are taken from mythological creatures of times a gone by who knows? If you haven't read this book yet then pick it up and read it no matter how young or old you are in age.

Customer Rating: 

I purchased this book because I was specifically lo0king for the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. I already have "Alice", and for free. This edition claims Looking Glass in its title, but only includes Alice. Do not be fooled. Get Alice for free and skip this misleading version.