Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

2010 is my year devoted to Alice. I have read Alice in Wonderland and have just finished Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There for the first time in my life. I don't recall ever viewing a film version of the stories, so these books are my first introduction to the brave character of Alice.

I loved the creative use of the chess game as a backdrop for Alice's adventures. Alice goes through the looking glass and begins making moves from a pawn to a queen. She has always wanted to be a queen (what little girl doesn't). This story is strategic and is equally full of exciting and strange characters complete with odd vocabulary, double meanings and living life backwards.

My favorite quote from the book: "There is no use in trying," said Alice, "one can't believe in impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Lewis Carroll wrote these books under a pen name. His real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He wrote his stories for the "real Alice" a daughter of a colleague of his. Alice and her siblings begged him to write down his stories and so he did. Thankfully generations of children and adults have these books to cherish for many years. Check out The Lewis Carroll Society of North America at http://www.lewiscarroll.org

To continue my journey with Alice, I plan to watch the film when it is released and to read the Young Adult novel THE LOOKING GLASS WARS. Until then I will continue my reading adventures.