For a lover of beautiful old books, children’s stories, fairytales, and illustrations, Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC is a heaven. Finding something interesting to look at is never a problem since almost every search term produces a new world of old, or rare, or beautiful things to explore. This made choosing one a difficult task. One of the first books I pulled, however, wound up not only addressing my interest in children’s stories and illustration but also my interest in media studies; Alice in Sponsor-land is a 1941 parody of Alice in Wonderland, designed as a children’s book but addressing the benefits of advertising the NBC Red radio program. This makes it a print form of advertising the benefits of advertising on the radio. It is full of statistics and adult language, making it fairly inaccessible to children despite its appearance. What audience would this have been for then?

This got me wondering—what other parodies of children’s books does RBSC have? The answer was: LOTS. I was faced once again with the task of narrowing down the options into a manageable size. Within the category of children’s book parodies I was noticing that there were plenty done of Alice in Wonderland, and that most of those were very unsuitable for children to read. I found that there is a huge trend among children’s books parodies to take what was something appropriate for children, and making it a parody for adults. What is gained from creating an adult book in the style or referent of a children’s book? From this question, I was spurred on to examine different elements of parody in hopes of better understanding the use of a familiar children’s story in a parody for adults. What is it about children’s stories in particular that lend them to being turned into adult parodies. Why convert the childish into something only appropriate for an adult?

I will go through three main sections (each given own page as visible on the top of the screen, as well as at the bottom under the Let’s talk parody! header) to talk about my various findings and opinions on this subject: Parody in General, Parody of Children’s Stories, and Alice in Wonderland and Parody which has information on its main page but also separate sub pages which go more in depth about each book discussed.

Start by clicking on Parody in General to follow me through the looking-glass and into a world of inappropriate parodies of your most cherished children’s stories.