I have some very distressing news (depending on how you look at things). After my personal hyperfixation-dedicated post last month, I decided to do a little digging through our blog history, only to see if I hadn’t just put myself in a club of one, and it has come to my attention that no one on our blogging squad has ever tackled the absolute goldmine that is Alice in Wonderland-associated media. For shame! Of course, everyone’s entitled to their own little slice of hyperfixation, and among our staff, we have plenty, but… I mean… Alice in Wonderland is arguably one of the most classic™ of Classic Literature. It’s been around for years, and it doesn’t find a place in the hallowed halls of timeless books without it being worthy of being talked about, so color me a little shook-eth. But as someone once said, “If you want something done, do it yourself.” So, get ready for hyperfixation post part deux. Let me take your hand and guide you through the weird, wide world of Wonderland-inspired books, manga, and movies. Buckle in, because our options are bigger than one giant “Eat Me” cake.

Sadly, most of the Alice in Wonderland stuff we have on our library shelves falls into the young adult category, which, firstly, why? Adult literature and media, and adult life in general, need a whole lot more whimsy in my opinion. Why not spread the wealth? That said, we aren’t in a complete desert when it comes to adult Alice in Wonderland-themed things, starting with After Alice. It’s arguably the lightest of everything I found, though that isn’t saying much since its author, Gregory Maguire, is also responsible for Wicked. No, not the movie, but the arguably much darker book it’s adapted from. Plus, since it’s a Maguire book, you can expect very thinly veiled politics and Very Big Statements against a backdrop of magic with some even thinner-veiled LGBTQ+ main characters (Gelphie is as subtextual as the sky is green). In After Alice, Maguire turns his sights on an even more forgotten side character. Ada, Alice’s friend who gets exactly a single sentence to her name, follows her down the rabbit hole. Her anxieties and apprehensions change the landscape and its inhabitants as she travels through Wonderland in a very Orpheus and Eurydice-type journey to bring Alice back home (and don’t take my word for it, the book jacket pats itself on the back for it). If underworlds and weird undergrounds are up your alley, this inspired reimagining will drag you down to where you want to go.

For an even darker taste (as black as black coffee, or a sip of shrinking potion) of Wonderland, you can turn your sights on Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. I haven’t mentioned my all-time great in a while, but, as you might imagine if you’re familiar with anything Alice in Wonderland, the word labyrinth is probably something to look out for if you’re in the mood for anything Wonderland-esque. Even Jim Henson’s Labyrinth takes notes from Carroll’s story. I mean, how many times can you drag a girl underground into a fantasy world driven by magic with nonsensical rules without it somehow coming back to Alice? Del Toro’s Alice finds herself in Ofelia, a girl traveling through 1944 Spain with her mother to meet her new stepfather, the fierce, fascist, and cruel Capitán Vidal. On the grounds of her new home, past the sprawling gardens, there’s a labyrinth leading to a gate to the underworld. Guarding it, there’s a faun (surprise, surprise). The creature comes with a prophecy: Ofelia, lost princess of the underworld, must complete several difficult, fantastical, and confusing tasks to take her rightful place on the throne again with her real parents. There’s always been a lot of talk about how the story ends (almost as much as Carroll’s tale itself)- which I won’t spoil here; do yourself a favor and just go watch the movie- but regardless of your final take, Del Toro’s allegory of magic as a stand-in for trauma is masterful. Like Alice in Wonderland itself, as one of the only few books I ever re-read, Pan’s Labyrinth is a movie that has a constant spot on my must-watch-again playlist.  

Speaking of must-watch-agains… it never occurred to me before delving into this post that my most must-watch-again also owes a lot to Alice and her adventures. Listen, if I have a chance to mention Spirited Away, you know I’m going to take it. Not that there’s an underworld or an unreasonably person-sized rabbit hole for Chihiro to fall into as she enters the spirit realm in search of her parents, but it has pretty much everything else; dreamlike, non-human logic that swan dives into the surreal, food that jumpstarts the whole story, and even a woman with a literal giant head ala Queen of Hearts. Guess that explains a lot about my media tastes, actually…

To finish our trip through Alice in Wonderland for adults, let’s take a look at the flashy Squid Game/Battle Royale-esque manga Alice in Borderland (and its live-action Netflix counterpart). Switch out the underground/underworld for purgatory, and you’ve got the world that Ryohei Arisu and his friends are thrown into. I mean, a vicious, absurd purgatory is better than a dull life where nothing’s going for you and kind of just… sucks, right? Right. Arisu (or our Alice) is about to learn a very valuable lesson in being careful what you wish for after his whims bring him to a parallel world where he’s forced to participate in a series of difficult and violent games. Unfortunately for him and everyone around him, the only way out of the rabbit hole, as is most often the case, is through it. As far as the story goes, though, while it is visually striking with its fantastical yet semi-realistic style and set pieces, I find Alice in Borderlands has the least to do with the original Carroll book. Maybe it’s just the characters that share names and a few matching traits (and the most surface-level of them at that), or the tumbling into purgatory that’s due to an incurable amount of boredom, but anyone can slap on the faces of classic characters past with a few key environmental design elements and call it an homage. But I guess that’s me being a bit too much of a gatekeeper when it comes to Alice and her adventures. For the fans out there, this is definitely a “prove me wrong” moment, and I welcome it.

That being said, since I brought it up before, I couldn’t finish off this blog post without, of course, handing out a few honorable mentions from our young adult catalog:

1. Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes: If you are a connoisseur of the slew of misunderstood villain Disney movies (here’s looking at you, Cruella and Maleficent), then this dive into Dinah, future Queen of Hearts, is going to be right up your alley. Besides, something truly sinister had to have happened to her to make her a fan of beheadings, right? With a cruel father and the arrival of an enchanting and dangerous stranger who threatens to upend her life, it’s only a matter of time before we get the character we know and love (and love to hate).

2. Off with Their Heads by Zoe Mikuta: For those who like the thinly veiled LGBTQ+ vibes of After Alice (and by extension, Wicked), this trip into the dark, twisted forests of Wonderland is a definite pick-up. Our two leads, witches Caro Rabbit and Icadora Alice Sickle, are on opposite sides of its sinister and whimsical landscape. One is living the high life as a guard in the Red Queen’s castle while the other is bent on revenge against everyone who wronged her, including Caro. Who knew that Alice in Wonderland needed a bit of enemies-to-lovers?

3. Pandora Hearts by Jun Mochizuki:  If you liked Alice in Borderland (or didn’t and want something with a touch more deeper Carroll), then check out this 24-volume manga series. Our Wonderland? A prison called the Abyss. Our Alice? A fifteen-year-old noble who’s tossed into said prison for a crime they didn’t even know they committed. Our rabbit? A dark thing that calls itself Alice and offers said noble a deal to help him find his way back home. Despite its much darker overtones, Pandora Hearts does what Carroll’s original text handles so well. It creates a place where time, memory, and identity are not sure things, or are far more malleable than you might think they are.   

With all of that, I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down the rabbit hole with me. Though it’s probably been a little darker than you might have expected a place called Wonderland to be (though maybe not so out of character for me), I think that’s the fun of something that has the same type of wild and wonderful fantasy that Alice in Wonderland does. No matter what you need it to be, it can be that, with the right sort of twist. Though with that said, Spooky Season is almost upon us. Maybe it’s time to climb out of the rabbit hole and take a stroll through some gloomy, twisted woods kept at bay in the pages of our dark fantasy collection. Now there’s a thought…

Until next time!