Alice in Wonderland

10-12 min read
20 pages

Alice in Wonderland, retold for reading aloud. A girl follows a rabbit with a pocket watch and lands somewhere the rules keep changing.

Alice was sitting on the bank beside her sister, getting very tired of having nothing to do, when a white rabbit ran past. That was ordinary enough. Then the rabbit took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, looked at it and said: «Oh dear, oh dear, I shall be late!» — and that was not ordinary at all, so Alice ran after it.

The rabbit popped down a large hole under the hedge, and Alice went in after it without once thinking how in the world she was to get out again. The hole went straight on like a tunnel and then dipped suddenly down, and Alice was falling.

She fell very slowly, with time to look about her. The sides of the well were lined with cupboards and bookshelves, and here and there she saw maps and pictures hung on pegs. She took a jar down as she passed: it said ORANGE MARMALADE and was empty, which was a disappointment.

Down she came at last, on a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over. Before her was a long low hall with doors all round it, and every one of them locked. On a little glass table lay a tiny golden key, and behind the smallest curtain was a door fifteen inches high.

The key fitted that door. Alice knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden she had ever seen — bright flower-beds and cool fountains — and she could not get so much as her head through. «It would be no use,» she thought, «even if my head did go through.»

On the table, which had certainly not been there before, stood a little bottle with a label that said DRINK ME. Alice looked first to see whether it was marked «poison», because she had read several nice little stories about children who got burnt or eaten for not remembering such rules. It was not.

She drank it, and she began shutting up like a telescope, until she was only ten inches high — exactly right for the little door. Then she found she had left the golden key on the table, and the table was now far above her, and she could see it quite plainly through the glass.

So she sat down and cried, which did no good, and then she found a very small cake under the table with the words EAT ME marked out in currants. She ate it, and this time she shot up so tall that her head struck the ceiling and she had to lie down with one elbow against the door.

She cried again, and she cried gallons, and the tears made a great pool all round her. Then she shrank once more and fell into her own pool of tears, and swimming about in it was a Mouse. Alice began politely: «O Mouse» — she had seen that in her brother's Latin Grammar — and the Mouse only looked at her.

They swam to the shore with a great crowd of birds and animals, all dripping wet, and a Dodo said the best way to get dry was a Caucus-Race. Everyone ran about in a circle, beginning and leaving off whenever they liked, and when the Dodo said the race was over, it announced that everybody had won and all must have prizes.

The White Rabbit came back, hurrying and muttering about a Duchess, and mistook Alice for his housemaid and sent her to fetch his gloves. In his house she drank from another bottle and grew until she filled the room, with one arm out of the window and one foot up the chimney, and the animals outside threw pebbles at her that turned into little cakes.

She ate one, shrank, and ran into a wood, where a large blue Caterpillar sat on a mushroom smoking a hookah. «Who are you?» it said. Alice replied rather shyly that she hardly knew, having been changed several times since the morning. The Caterpillar told her that one side of the mushroom would make her taller and the other side shorter, and then it crawled away without saying which side was which.

In the Duchess's kitchen the air was full of pepper, the cook was throwing plates, and a baby was howling. The Duchess handed Alice the baby and went to get ready for the Queen's croquet. Alice carried it out into the open air, where it turned quietly into a pig and trotted off into the wood, and she was not sorry.

On a bough sat the Cheshire Cat, grinning from ear to ear. «Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?» asked Alice. «That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,» said the Cat. It told her a Hatter lived one way and a March Hare the other, and that both of them were mad, and then it vanished slowly, beginning with the end of its tail and ending with the grin.

Under a tree in front of the March Hare's house a table was laid for a great many more than three, and the Hatter, the Hare and a sleeping Dormouse were crowded at one corner of it. «There's no room!» they cried. There was a great deal of room. They asked Alice a riddle with no answer, told her it was always six o'clock and always tea-time, and moved one place on whenever the cups were dirty.

She got away at last through a door in a tree, and found herself in the long hall again — and this time she knew what to do. She took the key, ate a piece of mushroom until she was a foot high, and walked down the little passage into the garden at last.

Three gardeners shaped like playing cards were painting white roses red, because they had planted the wrong tree and were afraid of the Queen. The Queen came, and the first thing she said about anybody was «Off with his head!» Nobody was ever beheaded, Alice noticed, but everybody was frightened all the same.

The croquet-ground was all ridges and furrows, the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets were live flamingoes, and the soldiers doubled themselves up to make the arches. Every player played at once without waiting for turns, and Alice found that a flamingo will twist its neck round and look up at you just as you are about to hit.

Then came the trial. The Knave of Hearts was accused of stealing the tarts, the King was judge, and the jurors wrote down their own names in case they forgot them before the end. Witnesses were called who knew nothing. The Queen said sentence first and verdict afterwards.

«Stuff and nonsense!» said Alice loudly. «The idea of having the sentence first!» She had been growing all through the trial, and now she was full size again, and when the whole pack of cards rose up into the air and came flying down at her, she gave a little scream and beat them off — and woke on the bank with her sister brushing dead leaves from her face.

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Text source: Plot by Lewis Carroll (1865), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale and shortened for reading aloud — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

Alice in Wonderland characters

Alice: About seven years old, polite and very literal-minded. She keeps trying to apply the rules she has been taught to a place that has none, and that is most of the comedy.
The White Rabbit: Wears a checked waistcoat, carries a pocket watch and is always late. He is not a guide — he never once explains anything to Alice, and he mistakes her for his housemaid.
The Cheshire Cat: Grins from ear to ear and vanishes slowly, tail first, leaving the grin behind. The only character who answers Alice's questions honestly, which is why his answers are so unhelpful.
The Caterpillar: Blue, smokes a hookah on a mushroom, and opens with «Who are you?» — the hardest question anyone asks her. He tells her the mushroom will change her size, and leaves out which side does what.
The Mad Hatter: Stuck at six o'clock and therefore at tea-time forever, so the table is never cleared — they simply move one place along.
The March Hare: The Hatter's companion at the endless tea party. Between them they ask Alice a riddle to which there is no answer.
The Dormouse: Asleep for most of the tea party, and used as a cushion by the other two.
The Queen of Hearts: Orders everyone beheaded and nobody is. Alice notices this before anyone else does, which is the beginning of the end of Wonderland's hold on her.
The Duchess: Keeps a kitchen full of pepper, a cook who throws plates, and a baby that turns into a pig once it is out of doors.
The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon: Tell Alice about their schooling — Reeling and Writhing, and the four branches of Arithmetic: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision.
The Dodo: Organises the Caucus-Race, in which everyone runs in a circle, starts and stops when they like, and all win prizes.
Alice's sister: Reads a book with no pictures or conversations in it on the riverbank, and is there again when Alice wakes up.

Want to know where these stories come from? The articles are here

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland characters

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