Alice with a Why: Return to Wonderland by Anna James

Title: Alice with a Why: Return to Wonderland

Author: Anna James

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 18^th June 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Return to Wonderland in this extraordinary reimagining of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by one of our most brilliant storytellers

England, 1919. Alyce – with a Y – lives with her grandmother, the original Alice, having lost her father during the Great War. When a mysterious invitation to a tea party hits her square in the face, Alyce realises her grandmother’s strange stories of a place called Wonderland might have some truth to them after all.

But the land Alyce finds herself in feels different from the Wonderland of her grandmother’s stories – for it is trapped in its own war. The Sun King and the Queen of the Moon are fighting over a stolen hour, and soon Alyce is tasked with setting it right. With the help of the Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and a Sailor Fox, Alyce will have to solve Wonderland’s problems and, eventually, find her way back home.

Enter an enchanting adventure through Wonderland, featuring stunning illustrations by Matthew Land. Starring new characters and old favourites, Alice With a Why is both a celebration of Lewis Carroll’s beloved original story, and a modern masterpiece.

*Includes bonus chapters from Anna’s epic fantasy, Chronicles of Whetherwhy and the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*

~*~

It’s 1919. The Great War is over, and the last soldiers recovering from their war injuries and the Spanish Flu have left Specula House. She lives with her grandmother, the original Alice after losing her father in the Great War that has left Europe and the world scarred. One day, an invitation to a tea party hits her in the face, and drags her into Wonderland, the place of her grandmother’s tales. A place that Alyce had once thought pure fantasy, but now, these tales might just be true. She falls into Wonderland, now at war over a stolen hour.

To convince the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon to stop their fight and negotiate, Alyce must get help from a Sailor Fox and the beloved yet chaotic characters from the original story: the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and his friends, as well as many others who now live in Wonderland. Alyce is determined to solve the problems of Wonderland and stop another war. And get home.

I love a good retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Anna James has delivered something truly special. Tapping into the trauma of the Great War and loss, Alyce with a Why explores the devastating impact of war, loss and sacrifice as Alice’s granddaughter moves through Wonderland, and befriends the wonderful Sailor Fox, who was probably my favourite Wonderland character. He felt like such a good friend, and I felt safe with him, just as Alyce did.

Wonderland is a nonsense world filled with upside down and back to front ways of thinking that make sense the more time you spend there. Unlike the UK though, in this story, there’s a fight over an hour, and a need to find the Time Being. It’s a war that Alyce doesn’t want to get involved in, but now she is – and it is up to her to find a solution, so the king and queen stop fighting over the hour. Astute readers might catch the subtle hints about the presence or lack of daylight savings and the stolen hour, cleverly hidden amongst the nonsense about papers, paper boats and stars.  It’s an utter delight, because as someone who read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a child, and then as an adult at university, the magic is there. It’s written appropriately for its intended audience, and if this is your first encounter with Wonderland, you’re in for a treat. Not only are you entering this place of wonder and utter nonsensical language and beings for the first time, but you get a taste of the original at the end. And yes, the book is better than the movie!

The new characters perfectly complement Wonderland, and fit in exceptionally well. Anna has captured everything so well, making sure the conflict Alyce faces is true Wonderland-style. And I had to say, I loved the Caterpillar in this one. As well as the little references to how he read books and which books he read. Little things like that will also enchant adult readers and hopefully make them laugh – if Caterpillar has a problem with the stories they have struggled to read, it makes him very relatable. It is connected to the original so well, that I feel the need to go back and read the original again. Why not? It’s a fun story and the book that kicked off the Golden Age of children’s literature and redefined children’s books as fun and whimsical. I’m a huge fan of Anna James, and it was exciting to see what she did with Alice and Wonderland. This was a fun story, and one I wanted to start again as soon as I was finished.