A commentary (as opposed to a real live review) on "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll

The Alice books are among those classics of literature that everyone thinks they know, but very few people have actually read. When you read this kind of book, you get a feeling that you understand why it's so popular, and you gain so much more insight than is available in the references that abound in popular culture. I try to seek out these books and actually read them, so I know their context and reality. Other books I've read that fall in this category range from "Don Quixote" by Miguel Cervantes to "One L" by Scott Turow.

One of the first things I learned by reading the Alice books is that there are actually two Alice books, and they're not all that similar. I found that I was more familiar with the characters and events of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," probably because the Disney movie was based mostly on it; I found, however, that most of the great poetry I was familiar with (like "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter") comes from "Wonderland"'s sequel, "Through the Looking Glass." Both books have the same loose plot: Alice gets magically transported to a nonsense world and wanders through it, meeting weirdos and crazies along the way. But "Looking Glass" is darker, more adversarial (as its plot is structured around a chess game in which Alice is literally a pawn), and aside from Tweedledee and Tweedledum doesn't have nearly the memorable characters "Wonderland" does.

I had one of those Context Eureka moments when I came to the overquoted passage in "Wonderland" when Alice meets the Cheshire Cat at a fork in the road. She asks him which way she should go, and he responds, "That depends entirely on where you want to go." Alice says she doesn't know. "Then it doesn't really matter much, does it?" Every single time I've heard this exchange quoted (most recently by Thomas S. Monson in this month's General Conference), the quoter stops there and draws out a moral that we should all know where we want to go so we can make good choices. And it probably was Carroll's intent to at least hint at such a moral. But the moral will never have the same effect on me now that I know what happens next in the narrative. Alice asks the Cheshire Cat what each road leads to (a wise thing to do). Not being nearly as enigmatic as he seems, he happily tells her that one road leads to the Mad Hatter's house, and the other leads to the March Hare's house. Alice makes her all-important decision about which road to take by reasoning that a Mad Hatter will be mad all the time, but a March Hare will probably only be mad in the month of March (both characters are based on Victorian expressions "mad as a hatter" and "mad as a March hare"). As it's May, it's probably safer to go to the March Hare's house. To her chagrin, when she arrives, the Mad Hatter has come over for a visit and the March Hare is indeed mad. It tickles me to no end that a story told to teach us to choose the road to salvation is really about choosing the road to the Mad Tea Party.

This is masterful children's literature. The loose plot and wacky characters appeal to a child's short attention span, imagination, and lack of need for coherency. It's entertaining simply because each episode is interesting. I can't wait to read these books, one chapter a night, to my children. I only wish they were Victorian children, so they could understand the parodies and jabs at Victorian poetry, education, and culture.

The introduction of my copy claims that there are good books which are only for adults, but there are no good books that appeal only to children. A good children's book, be it Alice or Harry Potter or Dr. Seuss, will appeal to adults also, because adults were children once. Lewis Carroll, who wrote these books for his seven-year-old best friend Alice Liddell, is an example not only of loving little children, but of remembering why it's important to be like them, no matter how old you are.