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Abstract: The essay looks at Christina Henry's two novels in The Chronicles of Alice series and concludes that Henry uses gratuitous sexual violence and brutalization of girls and young women in a manner more along the lines of child pornography (and therefore normalizes such treatment) rather than appropriate and responsible storylines for YA readers.
Kiddie Porn-Media slang of the term "child pornography" to give the impression of innocuous yet filthy material... Low-level pornography, if you can call it that, made for the young audience (kids between the ages of 10-15). Basically, anything that has at least something to do with sex or nudity meant for kids. Usually refers to child pornography and sex acts (also known as kiddie porn,) which are, of course, illegal in most countries and also considered evil, immoral and perverted by most of Society as a whole ("Kiddie Porn," Urban Dictionary)
Christina Henry's dark take on Alice in Wonderland appears in The Chronicles of Alice, a duology featuring Alice (2015) and Red Queen (2016). In this dark vision, Alice has spent ten years in an asylum after being betrayed, at sixteen-years-old, by her friend, Dor, and sold for sex trafficking to the Rabbit and the Walrus1. But Alice had been a magician (although she didn't understand this at the time), and after being raped by the Rabbit, she is able to escape (disfiguring the Rabbit as well as being disfigured herself by the Rabbit). In the asylum, Alice meets Hatcher2 who is also a victim of the Rabbit's sex trafficking world (though he doesn't remember this at the beginning). Alice and Hatcher are able to escape the asylum during a fire set by the Jabberwock, and it becomes Alice's task (with Hatcher's help) to find the knife3 that can kill the Jabberwock. Alice is able to defeat the Jabberwock, and she and Hatcher go on to kill the Walrus, the Rabbit, and finally the Red Queen (in the second novel), and then they are free to live as they wish. In these two novels, not only is Alice's story one of rape and disfigurement at sixteen years of age, but Alice and Hatcher encounter hundreds of girls and women who were sex trafficked as children and continue to be brutalized,...