ALICE

by Kirill Bulychev ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 1977

As subtitled, ""Some Incidents in the Life of a Little Girl of the Twenty-first Century, Recorded by Her Father on the Eve of Her First Day in School."" There are six incidents in all, by a Soviet science fiction writer speaking here to his youngest audience, and consequently de-emphasizing the science. The 21st-century setting functions chiefly as a sort of fanciful backdrop for Alice, a little girl who manages, too often for her father's comfort, to find herself in the thick of publicized events. Thus when a brontosaurus egg is found by some Chilean tourists, and hatches out at the Moscow zoo which Daddy directs, it is Alice who feeds and plays with Bronty though no one else can rouse him. And when the whole world is searching for the visiting Labutsilians, newly landed from a distant galaxy, it is Alice who points out the unexpectedly tiny creatures, who are perched in her strawberry basket. Alice also makes an important archaeological discovery when she gets lost on Mars; converses with a six-legged Shuska from Sirius; zips back to 1977 in a prototype time machine; and chats by the apple tree with a ""ghost"" who turns out to be an accidentally ""dispersed"" Japanese experimenter. The futuristic devices are old hat over here, and Alice perhaps a bit cute, but their confrontation has its own appeal. And, for American children, so playful a communication from the Soviet Union is likely to come as a happy surprise.

Pub Date: March 21, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION