That is until I learned about sealing wax that was used in letter writing. I first fell in love with this poem from watching Harriet the Spy of all things, and I often wondered how you could have ceiling wax, and what it actually was. This book also has one of my all time favourite poems in it: The Walrus and the Carpenter. The way Carroll has constructed the Looking-Glass world is amazing and there has been a lot of thought put into this to replicate the game. The goal, like chess, is to get to the other side unharmed. Alice is given the position of the pawn and therefore is only allowed one square at a time. You do tend to forget that it is a chess game as you read but the rules of the game are woven throughout.
Since the world is divided into squares she tells us that at the Seventh Square Alice will meet the Knight, and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum at the fourth. When Alice meets the Red Queen she gives Alice and the readers a summary of what is going to happen through the rest of the book. The absurdities and irrationalities remain, but the land is set out like a chess board, and the characters Alice meets are players on the board. Unlike Wonderland there is a lot more structure to the world. Through the Looking-Glass takes Alice into another strange land that begins when she walks through the mirror into Looking-glass House. This second Alice book is set a few years after the Wonderland adventures Alice looks older and Dinah has grown and has kittens of her own. I think the problem is Wonderland is much more well known, and the parts that have been borrowed from Looking-Glass are mistaken for being in Wonderland which is a shame.
I do not really have any preference between the two, there are favourite moments in both. Since we did Wonderland of course we had to do the sequel.
Nothing is quite what it seems once Alice journeys through the looking-glass, and Dodgson’s wit is infectious as he explores concepts of mirror imagery, time running backward, and strategies of chess-all wrapped up in the exploits of a spirited young girl who parries with the Red Queen, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and other unlikely characters.
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