Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

Strangely enough, despite growing up on L. Frank Baum's Oz novels, I'd never ever read this other early masterpiece of children's fantasy. I'm sorry I missed it as a child; there's a lot to enjoy here, as Lewis Carroll's imagination is prolific and various; I especially enjoyed the mad tea party. Actually, I enjoyed all the bits where Alice runs up against arbitrary social conventions she doesn't understand. Some critics have described the book as showing the madness of childhood, but if you ask me, it shows the madness of adulthood-- Alice has been given all of this education which she's been told will be of use, but absolutely none of it is, and whenever she tries to apply it, she gets laughed at. In the end, all she can do is retreat show more to the safety of tea parties and older sisters, escaping back into childhood, where everything is still sheltered and logical; in "wonderland", logic is just another form of madness (though one Carroll was an expert in, of course).

Carroll's books are often compared to The Wizard of Oz, and I can see why, as both feature rather determined young female protagonists in strange lands, but that's really where the similarity ends. Oz is portrayed as a real place, with a real geography, and real inhabitants that follow strange, but comprehensible principles. There's no comprehension in Wonderland, however; the logic there is purely one of a dream (as it should be), and it can never be deciphered by the dreamer. They're very different places, with very different approaches to fantasy. And of course, Alice and Dorothy themselves are quite different; Alice has a tendency to disbelieve and argue with everyone she meets, which doesn't get her very far, whereas Dorothy calmly listens to people and then decides to help them (her only malignant action the entire novel is undertaken by accident). Is it noteworthy that Alice, living in the middle classes near Oxford, was probably much more educated than Dorothy, a Kansan farm girl living in the middle of nowhere with her wards? I don't know, and though comparing them seems somewhat facile, I do have to admit that I like Dorothy much better. show less

What kind of drug-addled haze was he on? I mean, sure, the author was a respected mathematician and all... OH, WAIT! Nevermind.

The only thing that I can't quite wrap my head around is the fact he focused mostly on geometry. And he didn't live during the times of quantum theory.

Of course, if he had been dealing with the quantum nightmare, Dodgson's Alice would read more like a cat that was both alive and dead at the same time rather than that grinning ghostly monstrosity. And mercury in hats would really be the observational spin that makes up consensual reality.

This is a re-read and I love it for its imagination first and foremost. The wordplay is also awesome.

Who doesn't love this book?

Of course, we all know it, right? From being late show more to slaying the Jabberwocky to losing one's head to falling off a horse to tea parties to the drinking up of special potions. It's all great. :) show less

Moral of the story: your kids will be alright. Alice in Wonderland should be read by every prospective parent. More so than what to expect when expecting and what happens in the first year type books and from there any and every child development book that mentions milestones and behaviours. All they do is cause anxiety for everyone concerned. Despite my efforts, the kids turned out OK. Probably because I avoided kids books about messages and preferred to read nursery rhymes and silly old story books where not much happens. But I do wish I had read them Alice.

A few chapters in and I realised timing is everything. When I read to my two children, I only got as far as Winnie the Pooh and nothing more sophisticated than that followed. show more There is a natural moment when children no longer need you reading to them at night and when that happens you start realising that they will eventually grow up without you. Perhaps it’s just before or just after they go to school. I would’ve read Alice to them, but I must've thought it a little too sophisticated at the time, by then I was unnecessary at bedtime and withdrew from that part of their lives. Though I doubt that now. And besides, they had learned to read by then, anyway. I liked reading them nursery rhymes like the Mother Goose series. I mean, I care little about the Grand old Duke of York and his 10 thousand men, but it’s got rhythm. Though perhaps in teen years, reading Alice could be a guide to kids wanting to experiment with psychoactive drugs. But by then they should read it themselves when it might have lessons.

I thought Alice is the perfect child: she basically entertains herself on a sunny afternoon in the garden. No hovering parents in her life. She spots a rabbit, thinks it would be a fun idea to see where it’s going and she has a wonderful time. One minute she’s bored (every modern parent’s nightmare) then *poof*, like magic she’s gone on a wild trip. Just think a child can entertain itself with just imagination (or psychoactive drugs since there could be mushrooms in the garden, though it's a little late in summer for them I’m told). And then *poof* she returns tells her sister who then has a similar experience (maybe they shared drugs) and we have one of two things, either the whole thing was a dream that made a great story and the sister’s imagination was similarly fired up. Or, we have a folie a duex, a strange thing in the psychiatric literature where two people have the same delusion, rare and unprovable (but then this IS the 19thC, though so more things were possible before being disproven, and besides we’re so individually minded now we probably wouldn’t even share a delusion if we could).

Everyone knows about the mad hatter’s tea party, the melancholy story of the mock turtle, the flamingo crochet mallets, hedgehog rolled up as balls, a queen with a fetish for ordering executions and that wonderfully disembodied head of the Cheshire Cat. And then there’s Alice, who is kind of ballsy, likes to argue, doesn’t agree with people; she drinks everything she finds underground in this whacky world regardless of what she learned from the last time she tried something and perhaps because she knew she would shrink or grow; and springs up to speak her mind which makes her sound very modern and unmanageable. But, this is 19th C and parents seem to want to know very little of the child’s world and leave them to their own devices meaning they get to grow up through experiences, rather than endure adult theories about resilience through seminar style education.

“Off with my head!”, I am ranting, the Queen will likely be telling me about now. But this is a truly extraordinary book. It’s language is clear and direct: I could follow the absurd descent in the opening when Alice is travelling downwards for such a long time knowing it’s implausible along the way, except that something has happened to time and so we can easily believe how long it takes. The little rhymes that pepper the story are actually fun and well written, too. Clearly Lewis Carroll could write. He was educated as and often worked as a mathematician, a skill he likely brought to his writing which might explain its precise. It’s a lesson in reading and writing good English, without being a lesson in anything except perhaps leave children to grow up by experience. show less

Frustratingly brilliant nonsense, basically. Carrol was, is, and forever shall be a master word smith and what he does with the English language is all but expert slight of hand tricks bordering on full fledged magic. Reading these two stories is like going through two vastly different dreams, so much so in fact that it almost seems impossible that the two stories have any sort of coherence or consistency at all. But they do hold together despite all logic dictating otherwise if only because of the eponymous protagonist herself, Alice.

Though apparently relegated to the genre of children's literature it amazes me how dense and complex these two works are, probing deep into the meaning and use of language, sentence structure, and how show more ridiculous our day to day trials and conceits can be looked at.

Carrol, controversial though he was, was a brilliant mind and a near literary dimension all his own. The paradigm of literary nonsense that has become not only a set of pop culture icons but one of the most entertaining and somberly bittersweet meditations on the innocence of youth and the passing of time's clouding and eventual jading of the mind. A wonderful pair of stories. show less

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most well-known books ever written. Even people who have never read the novel have heard of characters such as Humpty Dumpty and Tweedledum and Tweedledee. When Alice falls into a rabbit hole her adventures begin and one is stranger than the other. In Through The Looking-Glass Alice walks through a mirror and finds herself in a live-action chess game. These fantasy stories are not just popular with children, they are also quite well-liked by adults. And there is a reason. The novel and its sequel Through The Looking-Glass play with language in a very intelligent way.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor show more less.' 'The question is', said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean different things.' (p. 223)

This quotation describes quite nicely what I enjoyed most about the novel. Sometimes, words have to be taken quite literally, and then there is always a second layer added to them. This interplay of literal and figurative meaning makes Alice's story work on more than just one level. However, I did not care for the fantasy part as much. While Alice's adventures are sure strange and sometimes funny I rather enjoyed the book for the how than for the what. The way the story is told was much more important for me than the story that is actually told. In the end of the second story, Alice asks herself whether it had all just been her dream or the dream of the Red King, one of the other characters in the novels. In the last line then, the reader seems to be included in the discussion: 'Which do you think it was?' (p. 278). I guess you have to see for yourself. I can recommend this book especially to adult readers interested in linguistics and logic as well as to kids, of course. is very enjoyable, rather short and easily read. On the whole, 3.5 stars. show less

I was so looking forward to finally reading this book. In fact, it was my "Summer Read" this year. I have enjoyed many quotes from the story that I thought I would be jotting a clever line down every couple of minutes.

My very first impression: wth?

I have read many "children's" books but this one is bordering on psychotic. That being said, if one remembers that it was written a very long time ago, 1870's, then it is quite an extraordinary story. Full of fantastical creatures and talking objects. It is like a dream put to words. I am quite surprised it was even published and that he wasn't burned at the stake. I remember an author visiting at a school who talked about why his first story was rejected: the mountains talked. Guess his show more publisher hadn't read this classic either.

I finished the first part, Alice in Wonderland and thought, well, maybe all the good quotes are in the second book, so I continued to read. About 3/4's of the way through, I began to itch. My skin felt like it was too small to contain me. I really wanted to just finish the story and be done with it.

I did like the final poem. I never found any quotes that I liked. I was looking for one with Alice saying to the Mad Hatter that we are all mad. I don't anticipate reading anymore Alice books. I am very thankful for all of our current juvenile/young adult authors who can write a comprehensible story not all based on crazy dreams. And who don't make my skin itch. show less

The last time that I read these books I remember finding them extremely confusing and borderline unreadable due to the constantly shifting narrative, but this time around they seemed a lot more straightforward. Obviously the story hasn't changed, but maybe my acceptance of Alice's mad-cap adventure dream has. I still can't say that I'm a huge fan of these stories, because there doesn't seem to be much of a point by the end (except in adventuring), but I very much appreciate the strange humour and whimsy that Carroll wrote into the stories. It takes a mad sort to write this kind of book, and an even mad-er public to embrace it completely, so we must be living in a mad, mad world indeed!