This is one of those books most of us have read or heard about as children, but is delightful to read, or read again, regardless
of one''s age or level of sophistication.
Alice is bored and sleepy, lying next to her older sister in the meadow, when she sees a White Rabbit run by, pulling a watch from his waistcoat and muttering about being late. She thinks that this is most extraordinary, and follows him down a rabbit hole in an old tree. Thus begins one of the most extraordinary
adventures in all of English
literature. Her shrinking and growing to extraordinary heights and sizes, her encounters with such strange and unusual creatures as the Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the Duchess and her pepper (and crockery) slinging Cook, the Red Queen (trying to off everyone''s head, as her sweet and somewhat henpecked King goes around pardoning everyone as soon as her back is turned), and the other extraordinary things that occur here are iconic everywhere, from children''s cartoons to advertising, as well as by allusions in music, literature, and everyday life. This book is replete with logical conundrums and paradoxes--yet it shows the world of the dream, and dream logic, better and more thoroughly than any other book I''ve ever read. It also shows how tremendously one little child can grow in an amazingly short period of time. She learns to consider others viewpoints, learns to defy false and arbitrary authority, and comes to accept the fundamentally irrational nature of reality, upon which we attempt to force an order it often, or even always, lacks in and of itself.