title: Through the Looking Glass
author: Lewis Carroll
genre: classic/fantasy/childrens
published: 1871
source: http://www.americanliterature.com/
first line: One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten had had nothing to do with it:--it was the black kitten's fault entirely.
rated: 4 out of 5 stars
I recently read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and it became an instant favorite. After being a bit biased against Carrol, he won me over with his fun and bizarre classic, so I decided to read Through the Looking Glass, which is the sequel to Alice's Adventures.
This story opens with Alice speaking to her cat Dinah and her kittens. She holds up one of the kittens to the mirror, so it can see the looking glass world where everything is the opposite, even the letters in books are backwards.
Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking- glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through--' She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass WAS beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.
Alice herself passes through the looking glass, into this other world. She is in her house, yet things are not the same. She decides to investigate this mirror world and have an adventure before going back through the looking glass and going back home.
Through the looking glass everything is backwards, time itself runs backwards and if Alice wants to get someplace, she has to move in the opposite direction to reach it.
When she leaves her house, she comes upon a sunny garden.
The countryside is set up in squares like a giant chessboard and as Alice explores it, she comes across some curious characters. Talking chess pieces, talking flowers, The Red Queen and Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a knitting sheep and Humpty Dumpty are a few of the characters she meets.
Where Alice in Wonderland is based on a deck of cards, Through the Looking Glass is modeled after a game of chess. Lewis Carroll's fantastic imagination is evident throughout, and I wish I had read these as a child. I'll be sharing both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass with my daughter.
'And you do Addition?' the White Queen asked. 'What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?'
'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.'
'She can't do Addition,' the Red Queen interrupted. 'Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight.'
'Nine from eight I can't, you know,' Alice replied very readily: 'but--'
'She can't do Subtraction,' said the White Queen. 'Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife--what's the answer to that?'
This has been a part of Once Upon a Time
