“Curiouser and curiouser!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
I recently reread Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol and then immediately followed it up with its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. I admit, I have a bit of an obsession with Alice in Wonderland. As a 25+ year old at Disney World for the first time, the one souvenir I saw that I absolutely had to have was a Cheshire Cat stuffed animal.
I love the imagination with this story. It’s fun and takes me back to my childhood. As an adult, I like to think of a darker version of this tale, but I love the innocence I feel when I remember this story as it was written.
Alice in Wonderland is a fun book to read, but don’t necessarily expect it to follow whatever movie version you have seen. That being said, I very much remember a cartoon that followed the book pretty well. Now, if you are wanting your child to comprehend and analyze the story, this isn’t the book for that. If you are wanting your child to read for fun and let his/her imagination roam, this is the book for you.
All that being said, I read Through the Looking-Glass a tad stressed. It was no fault of the book, but of a movie from my childhood. Keeping in mind I have a very vivid imagination at times and that I’ve always loved the Alice in Wonderland stories. As a young child, I remember a Through the Looking-Glass (non-cartoon version) where the Jabberwocky was after Alice, who was run to escape and try to get back through the looking-glass to safety and her home. That Jabberwocky I remember a little too vividly and apparently still scares me a little. Thus, I read the whole book stressing “seeing” the Jabberwocky again. I stressed for nothing (spoiler-he didn’t chase Alice at the end of the book). If I had known that, the book would have been much more enjoyable for me. Thus, taking my inane stress out of it, it was a good book, just not as good as the Alice in Wonderland.
wonderlandmissing 