One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll

A Celebration of Wordplay
and a Girl Named Alice

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

(pub.1.9.2018)
32 pages

A True Tale with
A Cherry On Top   

A uthor:  Kathleen Krull
    and illustrator: Julia Sarda

C haracter: Lewis Carroll

O verview from the jacket flap: 

     "Japperwocky

      Frabjous

      Bandersnatch

     What might those words mean? Lewis Carroll could tell you; he thought them up! He also dreamed up some of the most playful, beloved and enduring stories and poems in literary history. The most famous of those was for his young friend Alice, in a tale about tumbling into Wonderland.

     Interwoven with words and phrase of Carroll's own invention, One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll is a freewheeling celebration of language, wordplay, and imagination. Callooh! Callay!"

T antalizing taste: 
      

     "Lewis's friends in the boat were glued to their seats, not daring to gyre or gimble. Not even a Bandersnatch could have distracted them. Lewis added details that kep the real Alice and her sisters beamish, and also peppered the tale with things that would tickle grownups. He threw in breathless escapes, witty arguments about nothing, and one slithy surprise after another."

 
and something more: The Back Matter of One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll states that "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ... lived in England during the Victorian era. It was a stuffy time, when even children's books weren't intended to be fun: instead, they were to offer lectures about good behavior ... In his twenties, always playing with words, he translated 'Charles Lutwidge' into Latin and then back into English, reversing the words to become 'Lewis Carroll' the name by which we know him today."
     I was fascinated to learn that "nearly two hundred words invented or adapted by Carroll appear in the Oxford English Dictionary...", many of which are included in a delightful glossary in the book.