Jim Brown, a Homewood resident, has written a new children’s book entitled Alison in Wonderland: The Strangest Week At The Beach.” The book is illustrated by Jane Reid Ross, another Homewood resident and is being published by Rocky Heights Printer, a Homewood business. The book is about a young girl who shrinks herself down into the size of sea creatures and learns about their lifecycles.
Jim Brown, historian, folklore enthusiast, award winning author and naturalist, has written stories, songs, and limericks for his grandchildren, but as he says “I’ve always wanted to write a natural history book based on a trip to the Gulf seashore with our extended family.”
Now he has, and the title is Alison In Wonderland: The Strangest Week At The Beach. The “Alison” of the book is Jim and Linda Faye’s oldest grandchild, who recently graduated from Auburn in chemical engineering. “The heart of the book”, Jim says, “is an extended family trip to Florida’s St. George Island, during which Alison is shrunken down to the size of a variety of sea creatures and plants and even changed herself into the forms of those sea creatures.” She learns firsthand what their lives are like. First, Alison is shrunken to the size of a ghost crab and then a live little coquina shell, and later she takes the shape of an octopus, a clump of eel grass, a barnacle, a lesser tern and a redfish. In her new bodies, she learns a lot about the lifecycle of each creature and how strange her normal human life seems to them.
For instance, when she is shrunken down to the size of a ghost crab, she and the crab talk about eating:
“The ghost crab used its big claws to hold the coquina shell up close to its mouth. Alison noticed some little grabber and pincher things at each side of its mouth that started chopping up the little clam and moving the meat to its mouth. “What are those things around your mouth?”, Alison asked. “Oh, those are my jaw-feet”, the crab thought back to her; “Most all crabs have them. The fancy name for them is maxillipeds. How do you humans eat without them?” Alison thought about telling the crab how people used forks and spoons and knives with their hands, but it just seemed too hard to explain. . . .”
The book is at heart a natural history tutorial, written in a whimsical and fanciful, but fact-based manner. It’s written primarily for second to sixth graders, although younger children should also enjoy it should an adult read it to them. Divided into nine chapters, it is beautifully illustrated with 32 watercolors by Jane Reed Ross, one of Alabama’s well known landscape architects. She first developed her watercolor skills while training as a landscape architect; it has been her favorite avocation, winning her awards and a following.
Brown is also the author of Distracted By Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 2022), which was just selected as Alabama’s Adult book for entry into the 2025 Library of Congress’ “Great Reads from Great Places” September festival. He has also edited Up Before Daybreak: Life Histories from the Alabama Writers’ Project, 1938-39; wrote Number of Specks about his fishing adventures in the Chandeleur Islands; and a textbook of modern world history: Fairy Tales, Patriotism and the Nation-State: The Rise of the Modern West and the Response of the World, which came out in 2014.
To order coy of Alison in Wonderland: The Strangest Week At The Beach, https://localbooknook.com/product/alison-in-wonderland-the-strangest-week-at-the-beach/
