Kids Who Fall Down the Rabbit-Hole

It’s a recurring motif in fantasy, especially children’s and YA fantasy. (Is it just me, or does it happen with girls more than boys?)

Alice (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)
Lucy Pevensie (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis)
Dorothy in Oz (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum)
Milo (The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster)
Chihiro (Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki)
September (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente.)

(I haven’t included characters like Lyra in Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, because she does not fall down the rabbit hole; from our point of view she lives in the rabbit hole from the get-go.)

Please contribute to list if interested!

>1 TFleet: Wait, Lyra passes through that rectangular hole in the air, doesn't she? She sees a cat go through, and she follows? Just like Alice and the White Rabbit? It's been a while, but I thought she did cross over into another world and then came back at the end.

I suppose this motif is a way of taking the reader along on an enchanted journey, beginning from the everyday world that the reader can recognize and then creating a pretext for entry into the fantasy world. Don't they all have to end with the "reset button" return to the so-called normal world?

This is also similar to the "hero's journey" monomyth outlined by Campbell, the call to adventure, the crossing of the threshold, the trials, achieving the goal of the quest, etc.

I personally wouldn't tend to include Lyra. She doesn't go to another world until the very end of the first book, and when she does, she does it deliberately, knowing she's crossing to another world.

Would Gregor the Overlander count by Suzanne Collins?

I was very fond of Andre Norton's Gray Magic (aka Steel Magic, as the touchstone corrected me.) as a child. There were three siblings who visit the other world in that one - two boys and a girl. I'm sure some of the other "Magic" books were Portal fantasies, but the only one I remember for sure is more a time travel book than traveling to a different world.

Another that I remember checking out of the library a lot was The Hero from Otherwhere.

I won't actually link to the TVTropes page for this trope, because that would be mean, but there's quite a few examples there as well as the related trope "trapped in another world."

Of particular note, strictly IMO:

Coraline
Neverwhere (though the main character is an adult, not a child)
The Book of Lost Things

Also, there's elements of this all over the Twelve Kingdoms series. Pity the Tokyopop translations are both lacklustre and incomplete. :/

You see this a LOT in manga and anime in general, actually.

The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton was a childhood favourite of mine. Creatures from below cut a trapdoor in the floor of a playhouse and kids go down to rescue their baby brother.

I'm still working my way through it, but the Adept series by Piers Anthony actually is across between Sci Fi and fantasy, where the main character crosses between two worlds in a mirror like locale...

Thanks for all the responses! I will check out the ones I'm not familiar with.

#2,3 Meredy and amysisson: I'd forgotten some of the details about His Dark Materials. I guess that's a fuzzy case.

I also just recalled Neil Gaiman's Stardust, but I must check the details on that one.

Edit: No, Tristran walks beyond The Wall quite purposefully, on a quest.

Another example would be Oliver, Nicholas and Penelope in Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant.

Bastian in The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Pamela Dean's trilogy that starts with The secret country is about a group of siblings/cousins who find themselves in an alternate fantasy land. The twist is that it's a place they used as the setting for games of make-believe that they've played for years. However they find that the real place is quite different to their version which causes them no end of trouble.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I've added all of these I haven't already read to my Wishlist so I'll remember to check them out.

The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key
The Root Cellar Janet Lunn
Awake and Dreaming Kit Pearson
The Mirror Marlys Millhiser
The Devil's Arithmetic Jane Yolen

First one by Key is about a boy; the others have girl protagonists.

Oh, another just came to me:

Mister Monday and its sequels fit this theme as well. Male protagonist.

Elidor where the rabbit-hole is a derelict church and The Book of Lost Things, in which the protagonist actually enters the other world through a hole in the ground.

Fattypuffs and Thinifers where two surface dwellers discover strange underworld realms.

The Tredana Trilogy by Joyce Ballou Gregorian
Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff -- this one is a boy
The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay -- this has a group of friends who go through the rabbit hole
Gateway by Sharon Shinn
The Imagicators by Brad Marshland (boy and girl both go through)

Wow, even more than I thought there'd be!

We just watched Spirited Away again a couple of nights ago, and one is hit by how strange it all is. My son remarked “This is so weird,” and this is a kid who watches The Regular Show and Gumball! The three disembodied heads that bounce around, the giant baby, the freaky-looking but harmless turnip spirit.

But there are (at least) two items that match remarkably with fairy tale elements from western culture: (1) If you eat fairy/spirit food, especially if uninvited, you’re in trouble. (2) Names have power. I am thinking here of the fact that the first witch steals Chihiro’s name and assigns her another one, and Chihiro quickly starts to forget her real name. It’s implied that she’s going to forget her past and stay in the spirit realm forever if she totally forgets it.

Okay, so you're looking for falling down a hole or through a mirror or whathaveyou with regard to a motif, right?

Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Magicians by Lev Grossman (though I wasn't thrilled by the first book)

gilroy, thanks for weighing in. I'm totally a fan of The Magicians trilogy myself. I would say, though, that if you didn't like the first book you probably won't like the next two, either.

I don't think anyone yet has mentioned The Mirror of Her Dreams by Donaldson, where the protagonist goes through a mirror into the fantasy world.

>23 rshart3: Technically, someone comes out of her mirror and brings her back through. :)