My date with Alice in Wonderland

Written by Shirley Miranda

Bookworm invited me to do a Read Aloud for the Mobile Outreach Program at Cacra village. I was given a pop-up book of Alice in Wonderland by Robert Sabuda, and Stephie, Manjita and I made plans to have a tea party at the end of the session. With great enthusiasm, we planned our session and prepared a checklist to see that everything was in place. I did a rehearsal to convince Stephie that I would be able to handle it and she seemed satisfied. Since the community library is a small room with an electrical connection, we carried an electric kettle, cakes and cookies, sugar and milk. We set out on Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4.15 pm, all excited and mentally going over what and how we were going to perform in front of those eager children who ranged from the smallest (4 years) to the oldest who was 15 years.

As soon as we reached, the children rushed towards us with shouts of joy and this warmed my heart and made me feel welcome. They waited for the surprise to unfold. We shooed the children away to set up the room. Then we called them in and had a warm up activity, some songs and book browsing. Then came the long awaited moment for the action drama. I was just hoping they could relate to what I say and enjoy the story.

I started narrating Alice in Wonderland using various expressions to bring life into the story, especially when Alice sees the hole and goes down and how her facial expression changes from fear to horror to amazement and finally she  lands with a thud. We called the children to have a look and see what they saw at the bottom of the hole. They were thrilled to see the pop up of the hole and peered down to see where Alice fell. Looking at their involvement, I was encouraged to read on and continue with my performance as it gave me the feeling that the audience was engaged with me through the story.

As Alice begins her adventure where she walks through the garden, pop goes the book to show the children the garden! They were all amazed with the pop up’s, which made me feel good. Alice comes to a house and she sees the name plate of Mr. Rabbit. She enters the house and gets larger and larger till she explodes in the house, which almost collapses. The children were all full of wonder when they saw the pop up of her legs sticking out of the chimney and her hands out of the windows.

Then Alice suddenly shrinks in size and goes out of the house and comes to another house which belonged to the duchess. Pop goes another picture showing Alice with a pig in her hand and surrounded by all kinds of creatures, which made the children squeal with laughter.Alice runs away from that place only to meet Mr. Rabbit who invites her in. When she goes in, she sees the table set for tea. And she enquires what it was all about. The Rabbit says, “Why! I am having a tea party and the King, Queen and the Duchess will be coming. Why don’t you join in Alice? Of course Alice was excited and to add flavour to the whole scene I pleaded with Mr. Rabbit if I could also invite the Cacra children who are my friends to the tea party. Mr. Rabbit agreed and Alice prepared an invite as follows:

It’s party time!

Invited are you all children big and small

To the party of your life.

Wear whatever you like but make sure you are on time.

When the clock chimes. It’s party time!

The children were all excited to have a party and we sent them out of the room and set up the party scene. They came in and had cakes, cookies and tea and had a whale of a time. While we were leaving they asked us when the next party is.

This made me realise that when the pages of the book are brought alive, it engages the children and this will propel them to read and probably get them to look for such excitement.

The Read Aloud at Cacra for me was an eye opening session. It was wonderful to see the children sit attentively and listen to my narration. The whole concept was a novel experience and, along with reading, to have a tea party was an excellent idea. I think we could have these activities with a number of books based on the central idea. For example, Treasure Island would be ideal in the Cacra area, as it is close to the sea and a treasure hunt could be organised for the children.

As an afterthought I feel that if we have such engaging activities in a school library it would make reading fun, and make the children readers for life.