Book required: Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland Dover Thrift Edition
Purpose: This paper will further explore one of the topics concerning childhood and children’s literature
that we have talked about this semester.
Format/Length: Double-space the document. Margins should be one-inch all around. The paper should
be a minimum of 1,200 words (approx 4-6 pages).
Due dates: Part 1: Thesis email: Thursday, October 23th (by midnight). Part 2: Paper: Thursday,
November 1st by 10pm, online.
Part 1: Send a thesis statement:
Please send me by EMAIL your topic choice and thesis statement by Thursday, Oct. 23th, midnight (you
can do it earlier if you like!). I’ll respond to your email quickly. Your thesis statement should be one or
two sentences only, but you can send more if you like. Indicate which topic number you are responding
to.
Part 2: The Paper
Structural requirements—You should have the following in your paper:
• an interesting title
• indicate which topic number you are addressing (see below)
• the name of the author and title of work in the introduction (short story and poem titles are in
“quotes,” novels and plays are italic)
• an arguable, interesting, finger-lickin’ good thesis statement in the introduction. See the
document, titled: ThesisStatement#2(Lit).pdf
• Use the 3-step system for quotation. See the online document (available on the website)
“Guide_to_style_quotes.pdf” for guidelines. Remember: it’s all about your analysis of the language and
images of the quote! Also, include citation and a list of Works Cited.
• Follow the rules for writing a formal paper (the last page of the Guide to Style).
• Plagiarism is intellectual dishonesty, against Berklee policy of academic integrity, and a very
serious issue indeed. If you plagiarize, you will generally fail the course. See the syllabus for details. Talk
to me if you have any questions, and if in doubt, cite. Over-citation is no crime!
Research requirements—You must include at least one secondary source, in a significant way, in your
paper. This means not just using a quote from a secondary source, but incorporating the concepts from
that source into your paper. Let these concepts help you to expand your own ideas. Be sure to cite them!
You do not have to do additional research for this paper, though you are welcome to (be sure to cite any
research, any ideas not your own!). The topics below include some possibilities for secondary sources—
you may use other ones, as well. If you have any concerns, talk to me! I’ll help!
Choose a topic: Below you’ll find topics—not thesis statements. Choose a topic you’d like to work
on—and find your way to an arguable, specific thesis relating to it. The paper is an exercise of proving
your thesis with examples and analysis from the texts/media (primary and secondary) you’ve chosen.
1. Fairly fairy tales
Consider THREE (no more or fewer) versions of any one given fairy tale type (do something different
from your prior homework assignment). These can be from any reputable source (Grimms, Perrault,
Andersen, Disney, Francesca Lia Block, or others from the mega-site. At least one needs to be a text—not
video). Also, make sure you are working on an actual fairy tale and not a simple fable or other folk text.
Your paper (and thesis) should focus on ONE major issue in the tales you choose.
Your focal issue may be from the following:
• How are men and women portrayed–i.e., what does this say about the ideas on gender roles?
• What kind of body images are used and what kind of value/power are they given?
• Are there class or race or religious issues?
• What is the source and nature of power?
• What are the “rewards” and what do they say about the implied culture values?
• …other topic you see in these tales…
Make sure that the tales you pick are related and similar in interesting ways—ways you’d like to write
about. It’s very easy to find drastically different versions, but there is no need to “prove” how “different”
versions are from each other. Rather, concentrate on how the versions interact, how they refract shared
ideas, and yes, also how their differences matter regarding your thesis.
Secondary source possibilities: Heintz/Tribunella chapter on fairy tales; chapter on Children’s Literature;
Maria Tatar.
2. From Fairies to today…
Discuss the changes you see in one element of the ideology of the “child” through the historical
progression of children’s literature as we’ve seen it. You should discuss the changes from ONE text of
EACH period:
1) a fairy tale
2) something from the didactic and evangelical schools (Watts, Trimmer, Bates)
3) Victorian nonsense literature (Lear or Carroll)
4) modern (Sendak, Silverstein, Block, Simpsons).
Consider ONE of the following concepts: the imagination, education, sin, obedience, religion and
spirituality, the character and duty of parents, the parent-child relationship, gender roles. Another topic
is possible, with my permission.
Warning! With this option, the danger is to try to do too much. The best path is to pick a very specific
topic (say, parent-child relationship) and deal with only that in each of the 4 texts/periods. Go for depth,
analyze texts using quotes and close textual analysis of those quotes.
Secondary source possibilities: All secondary sources from this semester, but in particular,
Heintz/Tribunella chapter on children’s literature history; Nodelman/Reimer, Chapter 2; Lisa Frank
(If you’d like to replace anything we’ve done in class with some other literary work, run it by me first!)
3. Picture books and the implied reader
Reading a picture book is unlike any other kind of reading experience. Consider ONE of the picture books
we have read this semester (The Giving Tree, “The History of the Seven Families of Lake Pipple-Popple,”
Brundibar, or Where the Wild Things Are). In this book, consider your own interpretation of the book and
how the book functions as a combination of word and image. Write about both of the following:
1. How your interpretation arises from the interaction of text and illustration. That is, not only
should you discuss your interpretation of the words and images, but also how these interact with each
other—how the words reflect, alter, extend, even contradict the images. Likewise, discuss not only what
the illustrations add to the meaning, but how they alter how we see the words.
2. What is implied about the child who would understand and enjoy this process in this particular
book. Use the “implied reader” concept from the Nodelman/Reimer chapter for this. Specifically, how
does the text engage the implied reader’s tastes and interests? What is the shared base of knowledge?
What must the implied reader do to understand enjoy and understand the text? (See the Nodelman
chapter for examples of these).
Secondary source: Nodelman/Reimer, Chapter 2.
4. mmmmmmpleasure: what does it matter?
Using any ONE longer text from this semester, show how plaisir and jouissance engage and manipulate
readers, instruct and entertain. To put it another way, why does your pleasure as a reader—and the
complexities of it—matter in the text(s) you’ve chosen—for what it teaches, how it portrays themes and
characters, how it makes us feel, how it alters the process of reading (among other things). Make sure you
have a solid understand of the definitions of the two kinds of pleasure first—go back to the
Nodelman/Reimer Chapter 2 for this. You might also consider what the types of pleasure you find say
about the implied reader of the text.
You may choose from “Glass,” the Sherwood stories, Bates or Watts poems, “Pipple-Popple”, Where the
Wild Things Are, Brundibar, The Giving Tree, other Silverstein poems, and Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. If you want to focus on a different text, ask me first!
Secondary source possibilities: In particular, Nodelman/Reimer, Chapter 2.
5. The Implied Child
According Nodelman and Reimer, every text is written for a particular kind of hypothetical reader. The
text, in a way, creates its reader, that is, one who would “get” all the jokes, understand the allusions and
vocabulary, relate to it, appreciate it, be moved, learn, etc.. Nodelman and Reimer discuss this child
construct in Chapter 2. The children’s author, in imagining and creating this reader construct, 1. engages
an imagined reader’s tastes and interests, 2. assumes a shared “repertoire” or base knowledge, and 3.
assumes the reader has a shared strategy for “understanding” the text.
Considering all that goes into this implied child reader, what kind of reader does any text (or series by
one author) we have looked at so far imply? You should choose one text or one author. Consider
hypothetical children readers, but also adults. What characteristics in this hypothetical child or adult
would make him or her appreciate, like, and “get” the text you have chosen (referring to the numbered
items above)?
Secondary source possibilities: In particular, Nodelman/Reimer, Chapter 2.
6. Alice’s survival
“The Alice books are antidotes to the child’s degradation.”
-Morton Cohen, from Lewis Carroll, A Biography (1995)
Central to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is, of course, Alice, the Victorian girl lost in a confusing,
dangerous world, navigating with her own faulty resources. She almost dies by falling, by shrinking
herself, by drowning in her own tears, and she is threatened in various ways by the circumstances and
characters in Wonderland (“Off with her head!”). And yet, Alice survives, and Cohen comments that these
books are “formulae for every child’s survival.”
How, exactly, does Alice not only survive but emerge victorious? Consider the dangers to Alice, both
internal and external, how she survives, and what this says about the perception of childhood, the nature
of adult society (including its view of childhood), schoolbook learning, the expectations and limitations of
being a female child, and/or other issues? How are her methods of survival, as Cohen states, “antidotes to
the child’s degradation”?
Secondary source possibilities: Morton Cohen’s introduction to Alice (from his biography). Also, the many
secondary sources we have read. You may want to look at the Donald Gray edition of Alice in Wonderland
(available in the library) for further secondary material.
7. Making nonsense with past children’s literature
“The Alice books fly in the face of that tradition, destroy it, and give the child something lighter and
brighter.”
–Morton Cohen, from Lewis Carroll, A Biography (1995)
Consider how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a “nonsense” text, engages with typical children’s
literature of the past (Sherwood, Bates, and other earlier children’s literature). How does it subvert—but
also support it? To do this, you first have to establish what some children’s literature from the past is
doing (what it teaches and how it teaches, how it “entertains,” how it constructs childhood, how it
engages its implied reader, how it imagines its implied reader). Then compare this with what nonsense in
Alice is doing on these same issues (or some of them, at least). Pay close attention to the way nonsense
plays with language and logic, and subversions that come about as a result. Make sure you refer to the
Literary Nonsense Info Sheet (on the website) for specific techniques and concepts of nonsense
literature. You also may find useful some of the essays we have read on Carroll, or other essays in the
Donald Gray, Norton edition of Alice in Wonderland.
Secondary source possibilities: The many secondary sources we have read. You may want to look at the
Donald Gray edition of Alice in Wonderland (available in the library) for further secondary material.
8. Alice films and novels
Compare Svankmajer’s Alice OR Jonathan Miller’s Alice (both in Berklee library—but only do ONE) to the
novel. What is the significance of Svankmajer or Miller’s treatment of the novel? How much do they stay
true to it? How do they depart—and most importantly, what is the effect? Does the film depart culturally
from the original (in portrayal of childhood, the adult world, gender roles, or other aspects)? Does it
magnify certain aspects? Be sure to go beyond the obvious plot details here (Yes, unlike the original, the
animals in Svankmajer all have skull-heads, and Alice turns into a doll, but so what?? That is, how do you
interpret such departures from the novel?). Don’t forget the considerable “dark” side to both Alice
books… For this option, make sure you are doing a close analysis of the film and the novel, including many
specific examples. Describe film scenes in detail and analyze the detail… do the same for the novel using
quotes. Also, you MUST consider what each of these implies about children and the implied
reader/viewer. Hint: if you don’t have a “read” of the film, an interpretation, then this option isn’t for you.
Secondary source possibilities: The many secondary sources we have read from the Norton book. There
are more essay in the book which may be useful.
9. Some other topic that you don’t see here: be sure to check with me first before you go too far with
anything. I’m open to other topics, but I want to make sure your choice fits in with this assignment and
our class in a meaningful way
