Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

Through The Looking Glass
By: Lewis Carroll
Published: 1871
My rating: Delightful

I read Alice in Wonderland to my kids so I figured the logical choice to follow it up was Through The Looking Glass. It isn't as good but we still had fun reading it and trying to follow the illogical logic that fills the book.

As Alice tries to figure out how to survive in Looking Glass Land she meets some very interesting characters. Everywhere she turns strange and ridiculous things keep happening to her. She tries to help some of her new friends but many times she discovers that they are perfectly content with their bumbling or foolish roles in this crazy land. No matter how hard she tries to achieve something, she finds that she can't seem to get anywhere unless she does it by accident. More often than not, she gets farther by not trying to get anywhere.

I loved the vast array of colorful characters that she meets and the uncommon sense that everyone has was a lot of fun. I especially liked the knight that couldn't stay on his horse. But who can resist Tweedledum and Tweedledee and their lovely poetry. But I agreed with Alice that the Red Queen definitely needed a good shaking!

Again, Lewis shows his magnificent imagination and the ability to turn the most absurd ideas into a comedy of errors that kept us in stitches. It is such a pleasure to just let go of reality and allow oneself to drift into a world of impossibilities, leaving the cares of reality behind, even if it is just for a short time. We all can use a break from reality once in a while and Lewis has given us the perfect avenue to follow (or maybe the avenue follows us) into Wonderland!

Overall, even though this did not compare with Alice In Wonderland, it was still a great book and I very much enjoyed it. You should take the time to reacquaint yourself with both of these classic books, but make sure you don't try to make sense of them!