Monday, September 26, 2011

Tea Party Kit Sale Extended Through 10/31, Only $24.99 While Supplies Last!!!


It is our belief that when the lazy afternoons of summer ends and a new school year arrives, it is the “pawfect” time for celebration! School bells are ringing for class to begin, as are cash registers for new clothes, books and computers.

The Storybook Tea Kit Company is keenly aware of this. Therefore, to help children transition from summertime to school time while lending help to parents, the price of  our tea party kit (Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™) will be only  $24.99* ** through the end of October (regular price $40.00).  This is the very same tea-party kit that was launched earlier this year, which so many of you have already read about (some have sampled too) on your favorite blog.


Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™ is a tea kit book complete with sumptuous chocolate, delectable cookies, candy cake and cinnamon herb tea, focusing on Chapter 7 from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Our tea party kit connect kids with classic literature the old fashioned way, allowing them to dream and experience the feel of a real book while having a spot of tea.


In the story, Alice returns from wonderland and guides you back down the rabbit hole. Together you will meet the Mad Hatter and all of Alice’s chums. She will explain what truly a “pawfect” tea-party is!
Click here to purchase your tea party kit today,
while supplies last!
**US purchases only                                                  *8.75% CA tax for residents.
**Offer expires October 31st, 2011                           *Shipping & Handling added.
 

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Learning Through Alice In Wonderland


Major Themes


Growth into Adulthood
This theme is central to both books. Alice's adventures parallel the journey from childhood to adulthood. She comes into numerous new situations in which adaptability is absolutely necessary for success. She shows marked progress throughout the course of the book; in the beginning, she can barely maintain enough composure to keep herself from crying. By the end of the novel, she is self-possessed and able to hold her own against the most baffling Wonderland logic.
Size change
Closely connected to the above theme, size change is another recurring concept. The dramatic changes in size hint at the radical changes the body undergoes during adolescence. The key, once again, is adaptability. Alice's size changes also bring about a change in perspective, and she sees the world from a very different view. In the last trial scene, her growth into a giant reflects her interior growth. She becomes a much stronger, self-possessed person, able to speak out against the nonsensical proceedings of the trial.
Death
This theme is even more present in the second Alice book, Through the Looking Glass. Alice frequently makes references to her own death without knowing it. Childhood is a state of peril in Carroll's view: children are quite vulnerable, and the world presents many dangers. Another aspect of death is its inevitability. Since the Alice books are at root about change (the transition from childhood to adulthood, the passage of time), mortality is inescapable as a theme. Death is the final step of this process of growth. While death is only hinted at in the first book, the second book is saturated with references to mortality and macabre humor.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Alice's Pawfect Tea Party Kit Only $24.99 In September!


It is our belief that when the lazy afternoons of summer ends and a new school year arrives, it is the “pawfect” time for celebration! School bells are ringing for class to begin, as are cash registers for new clothes, books and computers.

The Storybook Tea Kit Company is keenly aware of this. Therefore, to help children transition from summertime to school time while lending help to parents, the price of  our tea party kit (Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™) will be only  $24.99* ** in the month of September (regular price $40.00).  This is the very same tea-party kit that was launched earlier this year, which so many of you have already read about (some have sampled too) on your favorite blog.


Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™ is a tea kit book complete with sumptuous chocolate, delectable cookies, candy cake and cinnamon herb tea, focusing on Chapter 7 from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Our tea party kit connect kids with classic literature the old fashioned way, allowing them to dream and experience the feel of a real book while having a spot of tea.


In the story, Alice returns from wonderland and guides you back down the rabbit hole. Together you will meet the Mad Hatter and all of Alice’s chums. She will explain what truly a “pawfect” tea-party is!
Click here to purchase your tea party kit today,
while supplies last!
**US purchases only                                                  *8.75% CA tax for residents.
**Offer expires September 30th                                 *Shipping & Handling added.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Alice in Wonderland

Fifty years ago the child world was made glad by the appearance of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It is a universal story and so belongs to all time. It has never gone out of fashion and never will as long as children love wonder-stories and grown-ups have young hearts.
But those who read the book when it was first published found in it a delight which the child of today misses. Fifty years ago certain poems appeared in every reader and were read over and over again until the child was stupid indeed who did not unconsciously learn them by heart. Today there is a new fashion in literature. Children are whirled from one supplementary reader to another, conning graceful rhymes and pretty stories all illustrated with artistic pictures, but the old things have passed away.
All the poems in Alice in Wonderland are parodies upon these once familiar rhymes. Scattered lines of the poems cling to the minds of older people; they remember being once familiar with them; they recognise the metre and can sometimes repeat two or three opening lines, but the complete poem eludes them, and the author they probably never did know. The children of today do not know the verses at all, and as a parody ceases to be a parody without the original poem as a background, the trouble of gathering these originals seems worth while.
After Alice had fallen down the rabbit-hole and had passed through her first transformation, when she shut up like a telescope until she was only ten inches high and then grew bigger and bigger until ‘her head struck the roof of the hall’, she became confused as to her identity. To make sure of it, she tried to repeat a little poem which everybody in those days knew by heart, and to such children is was very funny when it cam out all wrong and she says,
How Doth The Little Crocodile
Lewis Carroll
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

Monday, September 12, 2011

September Tea Party Kit Sale: Visit Wonderland For Only $24.99!


It is our belief that when the lazy afternoons of summer ends and a new school year arrives, it is the “pawfect” time for celebration! School bells are ringing for class to begin, as are cash registers for new clothes, books and computers.

The Storybook Tea Kit Company is keenly aware of this. Therefore, to help children transition from summertime to school time while lending help to parents, the price of  our tea party kit (Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™) will be only  $24.99* ** in the month of September (regular price $40.00).  This is the very same tea-party kit that was launched earlier this year, which so many of you have already read about (some have sampled too) on your favorite blog.


Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™ is a tea kit book complete with sumptuous chocolate, delectable cookies, candy cake and cinnamon herb tea, focusing on Chapter 7 from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Our tea party kit connect kids with classic literature the old fashioned way, allowing them to dream and experience the feel of a real book while having a spot of tea.


In the story, Alice returns from wonderland and guides you back down the rabbit hole. Together you will meet the Mad Hatter and all of Alice’s chums. She will explain what truly a “pawfect” tea-party is!

Click here to purchase your tea party kit today,
while supplies last!


**US purchases only                                                  *8.75% CA tax for residents.
**Offer expires September 30th                                 *Shipping & Handling added.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Making Homework More Fun

Throwing a tea party in the after-school mix with help sustain attention span for children's homework!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Tea Party Kit Only $24.99 This Month!


It is our belief that when the lazy afternoons of summer ends and a new school year arrives, it is the “pawfect” time for celebration! School bells are ringing for class to begin, as are cash registers for new clothes, books and computers.

The Storybook Tea Kit Company is keenly aware of this. Therefore, to help children transition from summertime to school time while lending help to parents, the price of  our tea party kit (Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™) will be only  $24.99* ** in the month of September (regular price $40.00).  This is the very same tea-party kit that was launched earlier this year, which so many of you have already read about (some have sampled too) on your favorite blog.


Alice’s Pawfect Tea-Party™ is a tea kit book complete with sumptuous chocolate, delectable cookies, candy cake and cinnamon herb tea, focusing on Chapter 7 from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Our tea party kit connect kids with classic literature the old fashioned way, allowing them to dream and experience the feel of a real book while having a spot of tea.


In the story, Alice returns from wonderland and guides you back down the rabbit hole. Together you will meet the Mad Hatter and all of Alice’s chums. She will explain what truly a “pawfect” tea-party is!

Click here to purchase your tea party kit today,
while supplies last!


**US purchases only                                                  *8.75% CA tax for residents.
**Offer expires September 30th                                 *Shipping & Handling added.

 

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Themes and motifs in the 'Alice' stories

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Growing up
The most obvious theme that can be found in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the theme of growing up.
Lewis Carroll adored the unprejudiced and innocent way young children approach the world. With Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he wanted to describe how a child sees our adult world, including all of the (in the eyes of a child silly and arbitrary) rules and social etiquette we created for ourselves, as well as the ego's and bad habits we have developed during our lives.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland represents the child's struggle to survive in the confusing world of adults. To understand our adult world, Alice has to overcome the open-mindedness that is characteristic for children.
Apparently, adults need rules to live by. But most people adhere to those rules blindly now, without asking themselves 'why'. This leads to the incomprehensible, and sometimes arbitrary behavior that Alice experiences in Wonderland.
When entering Wonderland, Alice encounters a way of living and reasoning that is quite different from her own. A Duchess who is determined to find a moral in everything. Trials that seem to be very unjust. But during the journey through Wonderland, Alice learns to understand the adult world somewhat more. In fact, she is growing up. This is also represented by her physical changes during the story, the growing and shrinking.
More and more she starts to understand the creatures that live in Wonderland. From the Cheshire Cat she learns that 'everyone is mad here'. She learns to cope with the crazy Wonderland rules, and during the story she gets better in managing the situation. She tells the Queen of Hearts that her order is 'nonsense' and prevents her own beheading. In the end Alice has adapted and lost most of her vivid imagination that comes with childhood. She realizes what the creatures in Wonderland really are 'nothing but a pack of cards'. At this point, she has matured too much to stay in Wonderland, the world of the children, and wakes up into the 'real' world, the world of adults.


Identity
Related to the theme of 'growing up', is the motif of 'identity'.
In Wonderland, Alice struggles with the importance and instability of personal identity. She is constantly ordered to identify herself by the creatures she meets, but she herself has doubts about her identity as well.
After falling through the Rabbit hole, Alice tests her knowledge to determine whether she has become another girl. Later on, the White Rabbit mistakes her for his maid Mary Ann. When the Caterpillar asks her who she is, she is unable to answer, as she feels that she has changed several times since that morning.
Among other things, this doubt about her identity is nourished by her physical appearance. Alice grows and shrinks several times, which she finds "very confusing". The Pigeon mistakes her for a serpent, not only because she admits eating eggs, but also because of her long neck. The Cheshire Cat questions another aspect of Alice's identity. He is not questioning her name or species, he is questioning her sanity. As she has entered Wonderland, she must be mad, he states.
However, it is not only Alice's identity that is instable. Some creatures in Wonderland have instable identities as well. For example, the Duchess' baby turns into a pig and the members of the jury have to write down their names, or they will forget them.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

words of J.K Rowling: IMAGINATION

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.


And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.


For the complete version--> http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/06/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination