Tag Archives: Alice in Wonderland

Reading for Fun, the Best Education

By Robin Bates | Published: September 7, 2011

In “Northanger Abbey,” Jane Austen advocates the ideal way to raise one’s kids: encourage them to read good literature and they will learn the life lessons that they need.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", Alexander Pope, James Thompson, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Measure for Measure, Northanger Abbey, Othello, Reading to children, Seasons, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Believing 6 Impossibilities before Breakfast

By Robin Bates | Published: May 25, 2011

Slate Magazine recently had a Jacob Weisberg column that invoked Alice through the Looking Glass in talking about the current Republican Party. Lewis Carroll’s Alice books seem indeed to be works for our times.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alice through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, politics | Comments closed

It’s Been a Mad Tea Party

By Robin Bates | Published: November 4, 2010

Tuesday’s election gave us a chance to assess the effectiveness of the American Tea Party movement, which has fascinated not only the American media but people around the globe. For liberals like me, at times Tea Partiers have seemed to resemble less the American colonialists dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and more Lewis Carroll’s […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Lewis Carroll, politics, Tea Party | Comments closed

Prancing Poetry and a Child’s Imagination

By Robin Bates | Published: July 16, 2009

Last week I gave a list of my favorite children’s books when I was young. My father, who is a poet along with being a French professor, read us poetry as well as fiction (each night, one story or chapter and one poem for each of my three brothers and me), so I thought I’d […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. A. Milne, Alfred E. Noyes, Cat in the Hat, Cautionary Tales for Children, children's poetry, Dr. Seuss, Edward Lear, Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, Goden Treasury of Poetry, Gunga Din, Highwayman, Hilaire Belloc, James Whitcomb Riley, Lewis Carroll, Little Orphant Annie, Louis Untemeyer, Mother Goose, Nonsense Verse, Now that I'm Six, Oliver Goldsmith, Rudyard Kipling, Song of Sherwood, The Listeners Tales for Children, The Raggedy Man, Walter De La Mare, When We Were Very Young | Comments closed

Michael Jackson and Peter Pan

By Robin Bates | Published: July 9, 2009

“I am Peter Pan,” Michael Jackson reportedly once said, and of course he chose to name his ranch Neverland. In this second of my two posts marking Jackson’s death, I thought I would reflect upon why J. M. Barrie’s fictional creation meant so much to him. Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. A. Milne, Annabelle Lee, Edgar Allen Poe, Francis Hodgson Burnett, innocence, J. M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Michael Jackson, Peter Pan, Secret Garden, Vladimir Nabokov, Winnie the Pooh | Comments closed

The Magic World of Children’s Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2009

William Kristof, the much traveled Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, wrote recently about the disturbing way that children’s IQ scores often drop over summer vacation. The cause is lack of intellectual stimulation. The problem is more severe with poor than it is with middle class kids. As an antidote, Kristof offered […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. A. Milne, Alexander Dumas, Around the World in 80 Days, Arthur Conan Doyle, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, C.S. Lewis, Cecil Day-Lewis, children's books, E. Nesbitt, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Freddy the Pig, George MacDonald, Hardy Boys, Homer, Iliad, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, Jungle Books, Just So Stories, Knights of King Midas, Lewis Carroll, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Lost World, Mistress Masham's Repose, Narnia Chronicles, Otterbury Incident, Paul Berna, Rudyard Kipling, Scarlet Pimpernel, summer reading, T.H. White, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess and Curdie, The Secret Garden, Three Musketeers, Treasure Seekers, William Kristof, Winnie the Pooh, Would Be Goods | Comments closed