Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Bite Sized Review: Alice In Tumblr-Land


Published:  November 5th, 2013
Alice In Tumblr-Land
By: Tim Manley
Penguin Books
ISBN-13:  9780143124795

Disney meets Lena Dunham in this illustrated humor book featuring your favorite fairy tale characters dating and finding their way in the 21st century.

The Ugly Duckling still feels gross compared to everyone else, but now she's got Instagram, and there's this one filter that makes her look awesome.  Cinderella swaps her glass slippers for Crocs.  The Tortoise and the Hare Facebook stalk each other.  Goldilocks goes gluten free.  And Peter Pan finally has to grow up and get a job, or at least start paying rent.

Here are more than one hundred fairy tales, illustrated and re-imagined for today.  Instead of fairy godmothers, there's Siri.  And rather than big bad wolves, there are creepy dudes on OkCupid.  In our brave new world of social networking, YouTube, and texting, fairy tales can once again lead us to "happily ever after" - and have us laughing all the way.

Review

     This review is just going to be a quickie, because this book is mainly just drawings from the author's website.  I love anything to do with fairy tales, and I am always saying this - plus, it was a cool concept.  What would fairy tale characters be like if they had to live in a modern world, with all its conveniences?  But they also would have to deal with the pitfalls of a technology saturated world.  This was supposed to be a book of humorous (and I assume), somewhat fanciful drawings of fairy tale characters.  I honestly looked through it and smiled a few times, but for the most part I didn't really find its sense of humor all that amusing.  If anything, this book was pretty depressing.  I associate fairy tales (and their reimaginings) with magic and the high likelihood of love, or at the least a somewhat happy ending.  It wasn't very fun to see beloved characters as mostly miserable, average people.  Overall, this was a disappointment and I wouldn't recommend it unless you have an angsty, worry filled personality.  Or, if you want to look at the pictures.  Those were kind of fun, if you go in with low expectations.  Any sort of credit this gets from me is based on the quality of the drawings, and that's it.

VERDICT:  1/5 Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, Penguin, , via NetGalley.  No money or favors were exchanged for this review.  This book was published November 5th, 2013.*

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