Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for English learners: level, words and how to read it

What the book is about

Alice is bored on a riverbank when a White Rabbit in a waistcoat runs past, checking a pocket watch. She follows him down a rabbit hole and lands in a world where nothing behaves as it should: she grows huge and tiny, cries a pool of tears and swims in it.

On the way she meets the Caterpillar, the grinning Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare at their endless tea party, and the Queen of Hearts, who plays croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs and wants everyone’s head cut off.

Themes

• Logic and nonsense. Every character argues with perfect seriousness about perfectly absurd things.
• Growing up. Alice keeps changing size and keeps being asked “Who are you?”, and she is not sure of the answer.
• Playing with language. Puns, double meanings and twisted proverbs are a big part of the fun.
• Making fun of authority. Kings, queens and courts are shown as childish and ridiculous.

How hard is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to read in English?

We measured how much of the book is covered by the most frequent English words (character names excluded). If you know the 2,000 most common words, you will recognise about 88.9% of the words in the book, which leaves roughly 11 unknown words in every hundred. With 5,000 words it is about 6 in a hundred, and with 10,000 words about 3.

For comfortable reading without help, researchers aim for about 98% known words (more in our guide). By vocabulary alone this is a B1–B2 book; with tap-to-translate for the words you do not know, it is readable from B1. It is slightly harder than Black Beauty and slightly easier than The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

What is hard: the puns and wordplay, which often only work in English, parodies of Victorian poems that native children knew by heart, and a few old-fashioned words (treacle, footman). What helps: one of the most familiar vocabularies on our list (about 97% of the words are among the 10,000 most common), short chapters, simple dialogue and episodes that each work as a small story.

Our take: B1. One of the best first “real” books in English. Do not worry if a joke escapes you; the story is easy to follow anyway.

Words to know before you start

These words appear often in the book but are much rarer in everyday modern English. Learning them in advance makes the first chapters noticeably easier.

How to read it in the original

1. Read a chapter a day. About 2,200 words, 15 minutes: the whole book in under two weeks.
2. Do not chase every pun. Tap to translate the words, enjoy the scene and move on; jokes often become clear on a second reading.
3. Skip a poem if it blocks you. The poems are parodies; the plot does not depend on them.
4. Read the dialogue aloud. The Hatter and the Queen are perfect for practising intonation.

The first line

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

beginning to getstarting to become

phrase in context

Tap a highlighted word

A gentle, simple opening. In the same sentence Alice wonders what the use of a book is “without pictures or conversations”, a nice joke to remember when you are reading a book without pictures in a foreign language.

Frequently asked questions