Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: Jenna Trumble

Book Title: Alice In Wonderland Meets the White Rabbit
Author: Lewis Carroll Retold by Jane Werner
Genre: Modern Fantasy
Illustrator: Walt Disney Studio
Publisher/Year: Western Publishing Company/1951
Evaluate the Book for the following elements
Style and Language: Using examples for the book, explain the following: Word
choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and sentence length. Share unexpected insights or
interesting information the reader learns from this story. (5 points)

The word choices from this book are not necessarily difficult for a child to understand
if the book is being read to them. There are some difficult words that a child might
not know however, I think that the way the teacher reads the word would give more
context to what the word means. For example, “’What a peculiar place to give a
party’” The way that the teacher would be able to read the word “peculiar” would be
almost as a question because the word itself means unusual and, when someone
uses that word, they almost have a confused tone added to the word. The dialogue in
the book shows the reader that you can talk to yourself without judgement, as Alice
talks to herself throughout the book. This book also showcases a child speaking very
politely to others. The sentence length in the book is not too long as there might be
new words for children to learn. The new words do have context clues however, I
think that a child might need help with the words because the story is cut down and
context clues might not be as obvious.

Character: With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points)
Who is the main character?
How can the reader relate to the character?
Who are the supporting characters?

The main character is Alice. The reader can relate to the story because Alice is a little
girl who goes through an adventure through her dreams. The reader knows that Alice
was dreaming because at the end of the book it says, “…where she had fallen asleep”.
The supporting characters are the white rabbit, and the Queen of hearts as they are
the only ones who have large speaking roles in this book.

Plot: Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)

The book starts off with Alice falling asleep under a tree and once she is asleep, she
starts to dream that she sees a white rabbit. She decides to follow this white rabbit
and see where he is going. As Alice makes her way through Wonderland, she meets
other animals, and they were as helpful as they could be. Alice then continued to look
for the White rabbit because she had lost him when he went through a small door
that Alice was too big for. Alice then found a house and out came the White Rabbit.
Alice starts to go up to the rabbit but, the rabbit starts yelling at her and calling Alice
“Mary Ann”. The rabbit then runs off after telling Alice to go get his gloves. Alice then
tries to run after him however, she runs into Tweedledee and Tweedledum and the
mad hatter and march hare. Once Alice leaves the people, she just met she runs into
the Cheshire cat and a Jabberwock where the Cheshire cat tells Alice to try looking for
the white rabbit through a short cut. Alice goes through the short cut and ends up
seeing playing cards painting roses red. They seemed to be terrified of what the
Queen would think if her roses were white. The Queen of hearts shows up and Alice
finds the white rabbit with her. The Queen of hearts then speaks to Alice asking if she
knows how to play a game. Alice politely declines and the Queen of hearts is not
happy about Alice’s response. So, Alice runs away from the Queen and the end of the
book shows Alice waking up from her dream.

Setting: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)

Theme: What is the main message of this book? (2 points)

This book takes place in Alice’s dreams. Alice is in Wonderland looking for the white
rabbit. I would assume that this book takes place somewhere in the 1940s because
Alice is pictured wearing a blue dress with an apron over her dress. The main
message of this book would be to be polite to everyone even if they are not nice
back. Alice shows the reader how to be polite to the white rabbit when he is yelling at
her to get his gloves and Alice shows the reader being nice to the Queen of hearts
who is not so nice.

Illustration: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories
Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon art)? (2
points)
The style of this book is cartoon art based on the animals that walk like humans and
the features they give the characters.

Media Choice (paints, oils watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons, acrylic, chalk):
(2 points)
The pictures look to be painted.

Give examples of describe how the following visual elements are used in the
illustrations: (3)
Line: The lines help create a dream like state with giving definition to the characters.
Shapes: The shapes are very playful because it is a child dreaming of a place.
Color: The color is very bright and colorful and helps keep that dream like look to the
book.
Texture: There is not too much texture in the book because when someone is
dreaming there might not be a lot of texture because the dream just focuses on the
people in the dreams.
Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and dark space and
all pages the same or different). (3)

The white space that is in the book allows for the reader to read the words because
the pictures are so bright and colorful it might be hard for the reader to read the
words on the page. The placement of the pictures is right underneath the words so
that the reader knows that this picture goes with what was said on this page.

Child Development Theory: Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social Emotional to

describe the connection to the book Chose 1 only (5 points)
Piaget:
Name the stage_____preoperational____________ and the age______2-7 years old
_____
Explain the cognitive development from this stage and provide an example from the
book to support your choice:
This cognitive development stage talks about how imagination is strong. This book
asks the children to imagine what Wonderland would look like with the pictures as
examples but, also allowing the child to think what else might be in Wonderland.

Erickson:
Name the stage_____________________ and the age_______________________
Explain the cognitive development from this stage and provide an example from the
book to support your choice:

Emotional Development:
Identify the age: _________________________
Explain the social development for this age and how the book relates
to the emotional level you chose:

1 would not recommend 2 average 3 highly recommended

Your rating of the book: ______2________

Why?
I feel like the book is very imaginative for young children however, I think that some
of the words might be too difficult for some children to understand on their own.