by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 26, 2008

In his unforgettable story "Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll revisits his seven-year-old heroine Alice (five years after his original book, "Alice in Wonderland.") In this book, Alice climbs through the mirror in her living room, and discovers another land of fun and nonsense.

Like Alice's home, this looking-glass room also has a chess set - but its pieces are walking around the room and talking! Alice discovers she's an invisible giant to them, and surprises the pieces by replacing them on the chess board. (Throughout the book, more references to a chess board, since Alice befriends the Red Queen, and even enters the game herself as a pawn!)

She also discovers a book with one of Lewis Carroll's most famous poem's - written backwards! (Its title is "YKCOWREBBAJ") Holding the looking-glass book up to the mirror, she's able to read the poem - "Jabberwocky" - though she doesn't understand its words. ("Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe...") One of the highlights of the book is a later chapter where the poem's meaning is explained to Alice - by Humpty Dumpty, a giant egg she discovers sitting on a wall. ("Brillig means four o'clock in the afternoon," he tells her, "the time you begin broiling things for dinner!")

It's a very entertaining book, with lots of a surprises and funny dialogue. Alice is a sweet but precocious girl, the perfect match for Carroll's contrary characters with their strange and impossible customs. And it's only in this book - not "Alice in Wonderland" - that Alice meets the bickering Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The characters were based on a nursery rhyme from the 1800s, which Carroll repeats in his book. ("Tweedledum said Tweedledee had spoiled his nice new rattle..") Alice enjoys the experience of meeting still more famous characters from nursery rhymes - and they even recite one of Carroll's most famous poems, "The Walrus and the Carpenter."

I enjoyed this book as a child, but found an entirely new set of meanings which I read it along with footnotes in "The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition." Apparently "the Carpenter" got his name only because it fit the rhythm, according to the book. Carroll asked his illustrator John Tenniel if he'd rather draw a butterfly, a carpenter, or a baronet - and the illustrator chose "The Carpenter."

But remember that scholars describe this book as "literary nonsense." That means it doesn't have to make sense, and it's perfectly okay to enjoy the poems and the book as they'd seem to a child - pretentious and silly. Thirty years later, and I still can't forget this ridiculous line from the poem of the white knight.

"But I was thinking of a plan, to dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan that they could not be seen."

"Through the Looking-Glass" is a very intelligent book, but at the same time, its playful silliness which makes it hard to forget.

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