Afternoon tea with Alice and friends

A pair of glowing yellow eyes, large and bright, blink open and peer down from the darkness of the leafy branches of a tree; a long, wide, toothy grin follows. Soon, stripes across the back and tail begin to appear; the animal comes into full form and, as if poised to pounce, looks at the small, young girl in the blue pinafore below him, and responds to her question:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don't much care where.”
“ Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.”
“So long as I get somewhere.”
“Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.” 

This exchange is one of many that takes place between the girl — Alice — and the Cheshire Cat, a questionable character she meets after falling down a rabbit hole. And it’s just one small part of the journey she undertakes in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The book was written 150 years ago but has endured the test of time. And Tammy Flanders believes she knows why.

“I think the appeal is the total absurdity of the characters and situations that Alice encounters and how with a laugh and a quip she just keeps on going,” says Flanders, a library co-ordinator in the Doucette Library of Teaching Resources. 

“This is a fun fantasy without tons of moralizing, though certainly if you start deconstructing it, there’s a lot to work with too.

“It’s a story that just works on many levels.”

The Doucette, part of the university’s Libraries and Cultural Resources, is housed in the Education Classroom Block and supports undergraduate teacher-preparation (BEd) students through its collections, information services, and workshops. That said, any student is welcome to spend time in the Doucette.

Suffice to say that if someone’s looking for a copy of the iconic Carroll work on campus, the Doucette is the place to find it. 

Flanders decided to mark the book’s milestone with a celebration for Werklund School of Education students and staff and connected with her colleagues in the Doucette to put together a celebration of all things Alice in Wonderland.

They brought in fancy cups and saucers and made sweet and savoury morsels, and treated everyone who dropped by to … what else?  A tea party, of course.

And as far as anyone could tell, no one lost their heads.