Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (Barnes & Noble Classics)

by Lewis Carroll

Other authorsJohn Tenniel (Illustrator), Tan Lin (Introduction)
Paperback, 2004

Status

Available

Call number

FIC A3 Car

Publication

Barnes & Noble Classics

Pages

286

Description

By falling down a rabbit hole and stepping through a mirror, Alice experiences unusual adventures with a variety of nonsensical characters.

Description

Bibliography.

Collection

Barcode

1121

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1865-11-26 (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
1865
1871-12-27 (Through the Looking-Glass)
1871

Physical description

286 p.; 5.19 inches

ISBN

9781593080150

Lexile

890L

User reviews

LibraryThing member tapestry100
With all the talk recently about Tim Burton's upcoming version of Alice in Wonderland for Disney, it got me in the mood to reread Lewis Carroll's original. I have read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland numerous times, but only until recently have I reread Through the Looking Glass, as I found a
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lovely collected edition at my local Barnes & Noble. This edition is particularly nice as it includes the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel for both volumes.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens with Alice sitting outside with her sister, doing her lessons. Alice is bored with her lessons, and when she notices a white rabbit run by wearing a waistcoat and looking at watch, which she finds a curious thing, she decides to follow him, where she falls down the rabbit hole and her adventures properly begin.

Wonderland proves to be a nonsensical home to many wondrous characters: the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Doormouse and their Tea-Party, the Duchess and her baby and Cook, the Cheshire Cat, the Mock Turtle and the Queen of Hearts and her pack-of-cards court. I won't go into too much detail of the story, as I'm sure most are familiar with the tale, and if you're not, my explaining it won't make much sense until you read it. The book reads very much like a dream, with one scenario leading into another without much in the way of logic.

Through the Looking Glass is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, taking place some six months later, even though there is no real reference to the first volume. The only two characters to really carry over from Wonderland are the Mad Hatter and the March Hare (here known as Hatta and Haigha) and even then Alice doesn't seem to recognize them. While Wonderland's court theme was based on a pack of playing cards, the court system in Looking Glass is based on chess, with a Red Queen and White Queen both playing important roles in this volume. Again, the story reads much like a dream, with no real rhyme or reason to the procession of the story.

I love the illustrations by Sir John Tenniel. They are perfectly suited to story, capturing the look and feel of the characters and Wonderland.

In doing some reading about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, I made some interesting discoveries. I always assumed that both stories were based on Lewis Carroll's stories that he told to Alice Liddell and her sisters, and while this is partly true, as the chess theme from Looking Glass did in fact come from discussions that Carroll had with the Liddell children while he was teaching them chess, the idea of the looking glass came from a discussion that Carroll had with another Alice, his cousin, Alice Raikes.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland remains one of my favorite books, and I like to wander back into Wonderland every so often, just to remind myself how much I enjoy it. Every time I read it, the Cheshire Cat always sums up the story best for me:

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'
This conversation always makes me smile. For me, it is the perfect description and explanation for the story, since in our dreams, aren't we all a little mad?
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LibraryThing member aethercowboy
Is it a children's story or a primer on logic or even a work of wit and wisdom?

Maybe it's all three.

Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass make up the two Alice books by Lewis Carroll. And in these books, Carroll paints a strange world in which logic has a strange way about it, mostly
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consisting of folk who interpret things quite literally.

This, being a classic of children's literature, has been mimicked by many, and by many, unsuccessfully. Though, I will admit that many adaptations of this work have been made satisfactorily.

The first book takes Alice down a rabbit hole and into wonderland. There, she meets all sorts of strange characters and discovers the queen of hearts, as well as other card-themed characters. The queen, it seems, is obsessed with displacing people's heads, and Alice must take every precaution to not upset her majesty.

The second book takes Alice through a looking glass into a chess-themed world. Here the cruel magnate is the red queen. Alice learns many new poems and logical quirks before returning back through the looking glass.

This book is sure to be enjoyed by bright children as well as adults who are kids at heart.
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LibraryThing member Terpsichoreus
I think that the failure not only of Children's Literature as a whole, but of our very concept of children and the child's mind is that we think it a crime to challenge and confront that mind. Children are first protected from their culture--kept remote and safe--and then they are thrust
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incongruously into a world that they have been told is unsafe and unsavory; and we expected them not to blanch.

It has been my policy that the best literature for children is not a trifling thing, not a simplification of the adult or a sillier take on the world. Good Children's literature is some of the most difficult literature to write because one must challenge, engage, please, and awe a mind without resorting to archetypes or life experience.

Once a body grows old enough, we are all saddened by the thought of a breakup. We have a set of knowledge and memories. The pain returns to the surface. Children are not born with these understandings, so to make them understand pain, fear, and loss is no trivial thing. The education of children is the transformation of an erratic and hedonistic little beast into a creature with a rational method by which to judge the world.

A child must be taught not to fear monsters but to fear instead electrical outlets, pink slips, poor people, and lack of social acceptance. The former is frightening in and of itself, the latter for complex, internal reasons.

I think the real reason that culture often fears sexuality and violence in children is because they are such natural urges. We fear to trigger them because we cannot control the little beasts. We cannot watch them every minute.

So, the process of Children's Literature is to write something complex and challenging, something that the child can test and turn over in their mind without inadvertently wondering about things like anal sex and drug addiction. Of course, we must remember that none of this stuff will ever be more strange or disturbing to a child than the pure, unadulterated world that we will always have failed to prepare them for.

However, perhaps we can fail a little less and give them Alice. Not all outlets are to be feared, despite what your parents taught you. In fact, some should be prodded with regularity, and if you dare, not a little joy.
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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
I can't remember reading Alice in Wonderland in childhood, and enough feels unfamiliar that I don't think I ever did. Yet so much--so many of the images, phrases, characters and situations are very familiar, because this book is so woven into the popular culture. Yet it all read so fresh, was such
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a delight. Carroll reveled in word play of so many kinds. There are nursery rhymes, riddles, nonsense words, original poetry and verse parodies, puns. In fact, the sequel, Through the Looking Glass has a witty running joke about etymology and semantics. How's that for a children's tale? Alice herself, based on a real little girl the author knew, feels very much like a real little girl, and not a miniature adult. I'm not sure which story to name my favorite. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts ("Off with her head!") and the Cheshire Cat. Through the Looking Glass has the living chess game that must have inspired Rowling, Tweddledee and Tweddledum, "Jabberwocky" and Humpty Dumpty. The creativity and imagination is prodigious. And most of all, even for an adult (especially for an adult?) this is absolutely fun without one dull spot in either tale. This is one children's story that absolutely deserves its classic status.
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LibraryThing member AoifeJune
Alice in Wonderland is a good book for kids-I know because I am a kid. A 7 year old girl to be exact But really I think that Alice in Wonderland is a good book for all.
LibraryThing member ALDUNN
This summer I flew seven hours and twenty-seven minutes across the Atlantic Ocean to Oxford, England. I studied at Pembroke College in Oxford University and saw Alice’s door myself in Christ Church Cathedral. Alice was a popular topic in Oxford. All the tourist shops had Alice shirts, Alice
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totes, Alice pencils and so I deemed it fitting that I read Alice in Wonderland during my month stay away from home.

To my surprise, I like the Disney movie better than Carroll’s written work. The words just seemed like “mumble-jumble”, as my mother would say, and didn’t make any sense. At one point Alice asks herself, “Would a cat eat a bat? Would a cat eat a bat? Would a bat eat a cat?” while tumbling down the infamous rabbit hole, and throughout the book there were instances like this that seemed a little unnecessary. I found that as I was reading Carroll’s unnecessary flow of drug-induced consciousness, my own mind wandered to what I would do the next day, what meal they were serving in the cafeteria and how much was left on my international calling card. To say the least I was extremely disappointed.

I did enjoy some of the stories, particularly the poem about the walrus and the carpenter (which had always been a favorite of mine during my Disney movie watching days), but there were too many little stories jammed together. Too many characters were fighting for attention and page space in the novel and Alice just had too exciting of a dream, especially during Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking Class was calmer when it came to plot and every event tied in to the other. I could definitely relate to Carroll’s analogy of the chess board quads. It was an interesting way at looking at the decorative grass squares on campus that were prominent in the Oxford culture (only the Fellows at Oxford could walk on the grass).

Turning the last page, I didn’t understand why Oxford was so enamored with Alice and her adventures, even if it was inspired by the spires of the college. Carroll does have an inventive imagination, but I think it would have been better if he had expanded on just a few ideas instead of jamming them all together into one story. He could have written an entire series instead of two books and maybe spacing out the incidents would have helped them flow, making it easier for the reader to enjoy. I can understand why the Disney experts decided to only take part of the story to make the children’s movie. If they had included everything, it would have been far, far too much.
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LibraryThing member technodiabla
I read this to my 6 year old daughter. We both enjoyed it a great deal. In addition to being masterfully imaginative the writing is wonderful. The way Carroll plays with words is so much fun-- my daughter thought so too. This book is not just for kids, there are layers and layers of linguistuc
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magic to appreciate at different ages.
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LibraryThing member Ani_Na
Good grief, this book is WEIRD. Carroll had aura-inducing migraines and probably took LSD to cope with it, which makes for a book... exactly like this one. It is a great read, though, especially for anyone with a love of words. The puns themselves are worth your time, and Alice is a delightful
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character. It's also an important novel in literary canon, though usually given to too young an audience. Personally, I think a life is unfilled until at least the first stanza of the Jabberwocky is memorized and recited at random. (Fun game: combine drinking and this as a read-aloud!) I'd recommend reading both books combined. For a similar book suited for a younger audience, "The Phantom Tollbooth" is a wonderful novel.
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LibraryThing member madmarch
These are by far my two favourite books in the whole world. READ THEM! So many people misunderstand them: Disney made it too cute, Tim Burton turned it into a typical unoriginal fantasy adventure. These two books are surreal, set in a world where the logical clashes with the logical on a day-to-day
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basis. There is wordplay, puzzles, darkness, curiosity...
The always-too-late white rabbit, the locked doors, the cake and the drink, the pool of tears, the caucus race, the enigmatic Cheshire Cat, the Duchess, the march hare- all this and more. And don't forget the nightmarish jabberwock!
What I also find about these books is that there are many unanswered questions. What are behind the other doors? Why is the Duchess nice one minute and horrid the next? And is Alice really mad? Is that her reason for coming to Wonderland. Is dream reality or is reality the dream? Will the red king ever wake up?
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LibraryThing member BrennaSheridan
Alice falls into a dreamworld of rhymes, cryptic poetry, and an array of crazy characters. This beautiful story takes the idea of creativity to an extreme, and proves there are no limits to the imagination. This book is great for children and adults of all ages.
LibraryThing member TakeItOrLeaveIt
so, he liked little girls. a bit quirky but if he didn't, he wouldn't have had no motivation to write this ultimate classic that activates any odd-thinkers thinking capacities and should be made into a musical not another movie for the songs in it are brilliant.
LibraryThing member manque
Fabulous "children's" literature. Carroll's play with language is simultaneously thought-provoking and delightful. Modern critical interpretations that emphasize social criticism embedded in the novel, or issues of male control of female desires, etc., miss the point: at heart these stories are
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wonderful affirmations of the power of imagination.
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LibraryThing member StefanY
My Internet Book Database of Fiction (www.ibdof.com) reviews:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
The joy of this book definitely holds through for me as an adult. I reread this with some trepidation as I remembered reading and enjoying it several times as a child, but was pleasantly surprised to find
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it just as magical as I did then.

I won't bore anyone with the details of the story as I'm sure that most who are reading this review are familiar with it. Suffice it to say that Alice's journey into Wonderland is still rather wonderful.

Alice still comes off as a bratty know-it-all, but I thought that when I was younger, so it did not change my feelings towards the book. The humor is well thought out, reading through it as an adult, I caught many more of the clever puns than I did before, so that made for some refreshing new discoveries.

I would reccommend this book to anyone who hasn't read it or at least hasn't read it since their childhood. It is a quick, enjoyable read that takes ones mind into a magical land of wonder.

Through the Looking Glass:
Through the Looking Glass continues Alice's adventures. This time, as Alice is playing with Dyna's new kittens, she takes to wondering what is beyond the room that she sees on the other side of the looking glass. Before she knows it, Alice has pushed her way through the looking glass and is in the backwards world on the other side!

The faniciful creatures that Alice runs into here are as colorful, and in some cases even more so, as the characters from Wonderland. There's the talking flower garden, a run-in with the Tweedles, a host of chess pieces of varying ranks, a unicorn, a lion and many, many more. Along with the Tweedles, my personal favorite is a white knight who can barely stay mounted upon his steed.

The magic and wonder from the first of Alice's adventures is still very present and, although the book sometimes gets confusing because things come and go so rapidly, I believe that I actually found it to be more enjoyable than the first. I highly reccommend it to children of ALL ages. If you feel like some simple fun and joy, settle back in a comfy chair with a nice cup of cocoa and let your mind journey Through the Looking Glass with Alice and discover all of the wonders that she finds there.
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LibraryThing member Vania_Coates
The language by the citizens of Wonderland is brilliant and clever. It makes the readers think twice about what we say because we learned that we often say what we don't mean. It was very enjoyable!
LibraryThing member lnmeadows
I love this book, but this is definitely one for older students. It is very confusing and doesn't necessarily make sense most of the time.
LibraryThing member EmScape
I think you either have to be really young or on lots of drugs to enjoy this book. It made my head hurt. I prefer things to make sense, I guess.
LibraryThing member RickyHaas
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are filled with unusual and unforgettable characters. I have to admit I was hesitant about reading this because as a child I despised the Disney Film, but I decided to give it a go anyways. I'm certainly glad I did. The books is filled with all
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sorts of weird situations and it's amusing to watch Alice try to figure how the entire world looks. Also I love that the author often clues you in on Alice's thoughts which are cute and provide a lot of comedy. While I loved this book, I know not everyone will and I suggest when reading it just to have fun and not try to think to hard about what's actually going on. I would recommend this book to both children and adults.

Also I loved this edition. It was filled with awesome illustrations and I love all the phrases and character's names written on the front of the book.
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LibraryThing member jms001
Remember the white rabbit that Neo had to follow in order to get out of the Matrix? Or the Looking Glass station that Desmond and Charlie had to go to in order to help the rest of the 815 survivors? Or where the Jabbawockeez derived their name from? Or what about where Tim Burton and Johnny Depp
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really get their kicks from? If you do, then you probably know what I'm talking about. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are two books by Lewis Carroll that, until now, I have declined to read. Of course I've seen the classic Disney movie (which has its good and bad points, in my opinion), but like anything else, nothing can compare to the book.

If for any other reason you should read a lot of books in your life, it's so you can truly understand all the references they make in shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, or South Park. And a great piece of literature is found in the adventures of Alice. It's a pretty easy read, and best of all, the book comes with pictures! So you can really get an idea of what Lewis Carroll pictured in his mind. Many of the scenes from the Disney movie can be found in both stories, but there are oh so much more! What I truly enjoyed about this book is that you can simply enjoy it as a children's story, (which is what I did since I'm not in college anymore), or you can read it and analyze the symbolism and allusions that litter every chapter of the book.

What I really took away from the story of Alice was the naivety of youth...yet even in youth, we are still so full of reason. But is this reason right, or is it rightly wrong? I think it might be wrongly right, actually. So therefore...reason in our youth is rightly and wrongly right and wrong. Does this make any sense? If not, then you'll definitely enjoy the book!
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LibraryThing member LucidLove
This is my favorite story of all-time. Nothing, in my opinion, beats Alice and the adventures she creates in her own mind. The whole experience of reading (and re-reading, and maybe re-reading again...) this book is magical to me. Lewis Carroll's humor and writing style alone is enough to make me
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want to read more.
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LibraryThing member jchancel
My first introduction to Alice in Wonderland was seeing the Disney movie when I was little. I remember enjoying it, but at the same time being annoyed by the confusing nature. I read the book a couple years later. At the time I loved the storyline but was thoroughly frustrated by the books' lack of
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cohesion. I reread Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass recently, and I found them entertaining in an entirely new fashion. If you try to force sensibility into any of the situations, you will miss out on the enjoyability of the random. Both books are the closest to reading a dream I have ever come upon, due to the randomness of the events. It is a fun read for adults and kids alike.
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LibraryThing member skstiles612
This book contained both “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass. I loved the idea that I had them both to enjoy at one time. I have always loved the story of young Alice who fell asleep while she was studying her lessons. After she falls asleep she dreams about a
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white rabbit. She follows him down a hole where her adventures begin. She finds herself in one situation after another. We all remember the tea party with the mad hatter, the croquet game, but how many people remember when Alice entered the house of the Duchess? The Duchess had received an invitation to play croquet with the queen and she throws the squalling baby she is holding into Alice’s arms. The baby eventually turns into a pig and Alice releases it. Then she begins to think of children she knows who would make good little pigs. I always found this to be funny. I really enjoyed this because at the time I read Alice’s adventures for the very first time we lived on a farm where we raised pigs and I was also able to imagine kids I went to school with being turned into pigs. Of course it was usually kids I didn’t care very much for. I loved this book. I felt sorry when she tried to tell her sister of her adventure and she would not listen. I believe we have all had experiences where we believe something and try to explain or tell it to someone else and they just don’t listen to us.The second of the two books, "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There," finds Alice climbing through the looking glass in a room in her house. Here she finds that she has to walk the opposite direction from where she wanted to be, to get there. If she walks toward something like a hill it actually gets farther away. I believe the first time I had ever heard the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” it was while reading it in Through the Looking-Glass. As I read both of the books I was transported back to my bedroom on our farm. My parents had purchased a set of Collier Encyclopedias and because they paid for it on time they got a bonus set of books. My favorite was the blue gray book #5. My favorite story? Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. This re-reading has taken me back down memory lane to one of the most favorite times of my life.
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LibraryThing member livrecache
Well, what can one say about one's favourite book, read over and over as a very young child, and still profoundly loved. At 5 years of age I called my cat 'Dinah' and nothing anything my family could say to me would convince me that Dinah was a boy. To prove it he lived 19 years as the biggest
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bully on the block.
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
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.
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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 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.
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LibraryThing member kwigginspost
I think this may be my favorite book. I've re-read this book like 20 times and I love the weirdness and great imagery.
LibraryThing member EJAYS17
On with the challenge! The 3rd of the C's.

I was really pleased when I saw that Lewis Carroll's classic was on the list. I've read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland multiple times and never failed to be enchanted by the little girl's adventures in that strange and wondrous place or the breadth of
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Carroll's incredible imagination.

It's all nonsense, and you know that from the time a bored Alice sees a large white rabbit remove a pocket watch from his waistcoat and consult it before taking off in great haste down a rabbit hole, that you are in for a wild ride.

There is a dreamlike quality to many of the things that happen as Alice wanders through Wonderland trying to make sense of it all. It is explained as a dream when Alice wakes up alongside the river with her big sister, to whom she relates the tale of her 'dream'.

Many of the attempts to bring this to screen tend to ignore the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, which is a great shame, because I find that their chapters contain some of the best imagery in the entire book, they also have some of the best nonsensical verse, although I felt Carroll reached new highs on that score in the sequel Through the Looking Glass.

The book, although written for children, has something to be enjoyed by adults and children alike, and stands up to repeated rereadings. It's stood the test of time very well, I find it's best enjoyed reading a version that contains John Tenniel's original drawings. These flesh out the sparse descriptions that Carroll gives, and have been the basis for any other visuals that have been produced based on the book, including Disney's animated version and the recent Tim Burton sequel.

For reading on a similar theme there's the sequel Through the Looking Glass, where Alice returns to Wonderland. Terry Pratchett seems to be able to make the most nonsensical concepts sound plausible in his Discworld series and Douglas Adams HItchhiker's Guide books contain some of the most inspired lunacy since Carroll passed away.
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Rating

(4998 ratings; 4.1)

Call number

FIC A3 Car
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