Alice's Adventures and A Tangled Tale

Alice’s Adventures and A Tangled Tale

A Tangled Tale:

Just to be honest, I didn’t like this series of stories at all. I had a hard time understanding the information because it was written in such a strange way. I felt like I was constantly re-reading paragraphs because I wasn’t comprehending what I was reading and was forced to re-read sometimes full stories. While some of the stories were easier to comprehend than others such as Knot 2 “Eligible Apartments,” I don’t think the message portrays much to a middle school student. I know I didn’t get much out of it and except for some of the more highly advanced students in middle school, they wont either. I don’t think I could use this in a classroom because my belief is that part of getting students interested in reading is showing them books that they can not only relate to but enjoy. Having stories that students have to struggle to understand what is going on and the point of the story is not doing the teachers any favors in accomplishing their goal. I think students who don’t really like to read would be turned away and discouraged even more if given something like this that takes a lot of effort to understand.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

Like most people I would guess, I have seen the movie when I was little but not since then. I couldn’t really remember the story prior to reading this. Overall, I liked this book a lot better than the stories from “A Tangled Tale.” I thought that it was more interesting from a readers point of view because while Carroll did skip around a lot in his writing of the story, there was a connection that could be made from scene to scene. I still didn’t love this book because the writing was sometimes hard to understand but I think even a middle school student would be able to make sense of the story. It had some very similar themes as last weeks reading with “Rocket Boys.” For example, Alice’s determination to find the necessary items towards the beginning that would allow her to enter through the small door and into the garden. She was turned away several times for different reasons such as not having a key, then being to big to fit, then being too small to reach the key on the table. However, through all her struggles and disappointment, she never gave up hope of getting into the garden that she believed might help lead her back to her home. While I’m sure there was one, I never quite picked up on the connection you could make to a math classroom with the book but nevertheless, I thought this book could be used in a classroom. As I mentioned before with a Tangled Tale, books need to be interesting to students in order to capture their attention and get them hooked on reading. I thought this book was one that accomplished that goal because it used a story they would be familiar with, since most would have seen the movie growing up, and would allow them to read the text with an interest. At least that is how I was when reading it. I thought once you realize that the story is a dream, which for me was about half way through the book, the skipping around and changing scenes quickly made more sense and I was able to make more sense of the book.

References:

Carroll, L. The best of lewis carrol. New York, NY: Castle Books.