Lewis Carroll “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” classic on 4 LP records, read and sung by Cyril Ritchard. 1957.  Jake is my blog collaborator today because it’s a snow day* and he’s off of school.  (Mr. Pants the cat also showed a lot of interest in our project as he heard there was a cat named Dinah and a Cheshire cat in the story.)  We are in Jake’s room, listening to this wonderful LP box set on his record player.  I have no idea when I got this set but I must have been much younger than Jake (9) because I don’t remember ever NOT having it.  I listened to it hundreds of times as a kid, so much so that I can recite lines from it today.

The format of this box set is typical of multi-record issues back then. Instead of an LP having Side 1 on one side and Side 2 on the other, it has Side 1 and Side 8 (then Side 2 and Side 7, etc) allowing the listener to stack up the records and let them fall in order, minimizing the need to flip and  pause to only once.

Besides the classic tale and crisp British narration of Cyril Ritchard, the set comes with a “facsimile volume of the rare 1865 first edition of the book” which is nestled into the bottom of the box, under the LP’s. I distinctly remember feeling very polished and sophisticated as I paged through this (faux?) leather-bound, gold-embossed book, reading along with Cyril.

Now re-listening to it as an adult, I realize it is a weird and creepy tale, especially in its non-Disney, unabridged form. Hallucinations from imbibed substances, child abuse, tyranny, and more!  The poetry embedded in the story is insane.  I always loved “You Are Old Father William” as told by the Caterpillar to Alice, as well as the poem Alice recites to herself at the beginning of the story to convince herself she hasn’t transformed into her dull-minded friend, Mabel:

“How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And power the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!”

*It’s not really a snow day, it’s a “cold day” and yes, it’s cold.  When I got up this morning it was -8F with a wind chill of something like -25F.  BUT, seriously, it’s Wisconsin and it gets cold and we have the gear to deal with it. I grew up in rural northeastern Wisconsin and 1970’s winters were no joke; I remember once or twice the actual temperature (not windchill) was -25F to -30F.  School was never cancelled for cold weather, only blizzards.  And I rode the bus for an hour (uphill, both ways) through the dark, bitterly cold countryside.