Such imagination, creativity, inventiveness, cleverness, sweetness, silliness, and nonsense. And poetry.
Cats, rabbits, mice, birds, lizards, fish, a giant puppy, mushrooms (heh), Queens, a Duchess, cards, chess, a Gryphon, hedgehogs, flamingos, knights, a lion and a unicorn, eggs, Humpty Dumpty, tea, jam, bread and butter, bread and butterflies! Every wonderful thing a child can love is here!
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass' are both to be read as a child, then as a child again, then as an adult reading through the eyes of a child. Children can accept and appreciate, but above all enjoy, nonsense; and so can adults with an open mind and a childlike sense of wonder and whimsy that they still keep locked up in their heart of hearts. Their "muchness" never lost.
That and the newfound, adult knowledge that the real world is rather full of as much nonsense as any dream world. At least in dreams and wonder we are in control and can change the rules as we see fit no trouble, no fuss.
Little Alice herself is a very intelligent, inquisitive, thoughtful, and patient yet nonetheless frustrated child, curious and wondering about the strict, constrained Victorian life around her. She is full of amusing musings, and likes to play by her own rules and logic back home. In Wonderland this is continuously tested, in her role as the only sane, sensible person - she, only a little girl - in a world with no structure, and no rules, but constantly made up and changing ones, each more nonsensical than the last. Dreams and reality collide for this child, who grows curiouser and curiouser the older she gets, hopefully never losing her innocence, and sense of muchness.
Therefore she will always understand everything.
Such as even when winning a game of chess, and becoming queen, it's not all it's cracked up to be; the adult concepts of "power", prosperity and order are ultimately meaningless and fleeting in of themselves.
Just go read 'Alice in Wonderland' in its entirety if you somehow haven't yet. Books with some pictures in it can be as rewarding and insightful as books with no pictures. It is everything except prosaic.
Read it again and again, and appreciate it far more each time.
For Alice, and Wonderland, are childhood - desperate to be carried over into adulthood, and understood.
Final Score: 4/5
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