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Incorrect: Mickey Mouse was created in the 20s, Disney's Alice in Wonderland was released in 1951. You're right that the book would still have been copyrighted.

Oswald the Rabbit was also created by Walt Disney, in 1927, and sold to Universal. He then created Mickey Mouse as a replacement character for his own movie.

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They aren't referencing the 1951 movie, but instead the 1920s shorts series called Alice Comedies, the first of which is literally called Alice's Wonderland.

These weren't really retellings of the original stories, but it would nevertheless not be hard to imagine they would count as a derivative work under modern law and would thus have been illegal to produce without a licensing deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Comedies

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