Alice in Wonderland (1951) — the Disney animated classic · Alice in Wonderland (2010) — Tim Burton's live-action version
Watch order barely matters here, because no film is really the book. If your child knows the Disney version they know the places and a few of the faces, but almost none of the jokes, and the jokes are the point. At 27,000 words it's the shortest famous classic there is, so the low-risk move is just to start reading it aloud tonight and let the movie be a movie.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Walrus and the Carpenter, and the garden of talking flowers all come from the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. The 1951 film is a blend; this book is the original recipe.
The 2010 version is a sequel of its own invention: a nineteen-year-old Alice returns to Wonderland to slay a dragon foretold by prophecy. There is no prophecy in Carroll, and no quest. He was making fun of books like that.
Movies want Alice to learn something or save something. Carroll's Alice just wanders, argues, and grows and shrinks, and the pointlessness is the joke. Kids who know the films still don't know the shape of the book.
A turtle sobbing about his school days, where the lessons 'lessen' every day. One of the funniest chapters Carroll wrote, and no major film has kept him.
A baby that turns into a pig mid-lullaby, a cook throwing frying pans, and a moral for absolutely everything. Pure Wonderland, never filmed properly.
Whiting and blacking, reeling and writhing, a tale about a tail. Half of Carroll's jokes only exist in print, which is why the book stays funny after the films fade.
The verdict before the evidence, jurors writing down their own names so they don't forget them, Alice growing too big for the courtroom. The films sample it; the book commits to it.
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