Teen Book Club Ideas: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a wildly entertaining tale for all ages. Written more than a century ago, this story continues to be a favorite of readers around the world.
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written in 1865 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a well known mathematician, scholar, and author. Writing under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, Dodgson wrote other famous works including Through the Looking Glass and the nonsensical poem “Jabberwocky.”
Because we are big Disney fans our kids have always been familiar with the story of Alice, Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit, and the many other interesting characters Alice meets on her adventures. When our children were younger they watched this classic Disney animated movie and even read the original story of Alice.
As they moved into the teen years we decided it was time to revisit this tale and learn more about the original story. We decided to read about Alice and her adventures together again with our teen book club — this was definitely one of our zaniest literary adventures ever!
Reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with teens gives you the opportunity to discuss issues like:
- the challenges children face as they grow, mature, and move into adulthood
- learning to adapt to new social situations
- how confusing language (particularly the English language) can be and how it can easily lead to miscommunication
- the role of rules in society
For additional background information and discussion questions we recommend using the Penguin Classic’s Reader’s Guide for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
This guides offers insight into Carroll’s inspiration for writing about Alice’s adventures as well as biographical information about the author.
Eleven discussion questions are included, all appropriate and for thoughtful teen readers.
Bring the Book to Life with Activities
After you read the book together, take some time to get creative and turn it into a lesson. Here are some of the things we did as a family and with our friends during our book club.
Watch movies based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and compare them to the book with our helper – Comparing a Book to its Movie. For this project we watched two of our favorite Disney movies:
- Disney’s 1951 classic animated Alice in Wonderland film
- Disney’s 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland film
Math and Poetry
After reading about Alice’s adventures our kids were interested to learn more about the other works of Lewis Carroll.
We spent a few days reading and discussing his famous poem “Jabberwocky.”
Next, we learned more about the mathematical mind of this creative author by completing some of Lewis Carroll’s Games and Puzzles. This fun book includes brain teasers such as Cakes in a Row, Alice’s Multiplication Tables, Looking-Glass Time, Arithmetical Croquet, and more!
More Books for Tween Book Club
Here are some of our favorite books from our book club, along with activities and discussion questions you can use with your middle & high school students.
If your tween likes adventure books, here are some of our favorites that are full of thrilling adventures.
Check out these fun fantasy books.