The James Logan Courier

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

In the land of video game characters who have recently returned from extended leave, all the headlines belong to Duke Nukem.

But if you want to read the real success story, you'd best train your eyes on Alice, whose comeback validates not only her place in today's gaming climate, but the legitimacy of a genre — family-friendly platforming wrapped inside a bloody, deranged, M-rated shell — that hasn't had much representation in the 10-plus years since "American McGee's Alice" came, left its mark and went.

At its core, "Alice: Madness Returns" plays by many of the same rules that governed its predecessor, splitting platforming and combat roughly down the middle and spreading it out across a lengthy (15 hours, give or take) journey through some large, diverse and creatively sovereign interpretations of Lewis Carroll's imagination.

From wikipedia:
Esther Louise Forbes (June 28, 1891 - August 12, 1967) was an American novelist and children's writer who received the Pulitzer Prize and the Newbery Medal.

Forbes was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, the fifth of six children born to Harriette Merrifield and William Trowbridge Forbes. After attending school in Wisconsin, Forbes served as a member of the editorial staff at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston. Her first novel, Oh Genteel Lady!, was published in 1926 and was made a selection by the then newly formed Book-of-the-Month Club. She married Albert Hoskins in 1926. They were divorced in 1933.

Learn more about Esther Forbes, free from the Worchester Polytechnic Institute.