Pardon if my book review is quick, but Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is officially one of my new favorites. Why haven’t we read this masterpiece in high school yet? It definitely made me ponder about… everything the world has to offer more than Catcher in the Rye, and it’s all a glorious dream!
Alice is a dainty seven year old girl in the Victorian era, and I love the little nitpicking jokes related to the advancement in mathematics during the nineteenth century that the book satirizes. What makes a character like herself infinitely interesting to other young protagonists is her strictly curious self and her positivity. Even when things don’t seem to go her way, and sometimes she may or may not end up flooding an entire room with her tears because she ate a cookie reading “Eat Me” and grew to an enormous size and then proceeded to shrink after drinking from a small bottle reading “Drink Me” and then being flushed out of a tiny keyhole into a beautiful garden… she’s still just a kid who doesn’t know anything about anything. And that whole keyhole business isn’t as relevant in the book. Things don’t play out the same in the Disney movie, and that’s strangely unfortunate. I wish they had added more of these brilliant and thought-provoking pieces into shows or maybe their own spin-offs of sorts, but oh well.
As a kid, imagination is all that could ever get me out of a funk. And when my friends weren’t around, it’s all I ever had. These bizarre stories made me feel like that kid again, but with just the perfect amount of sophisticated vocabulary and humor to keep me hooked. It almost felt like an essay that could’ve been written in the modern day.
To add on, there are particular characters that keep me invested with their funny songs and their quirky attitudes, such as the Mad Hatter and a Hare who consistently contradict each other’s statements, and in the end it’ll be impossible to tell if there was ever a right answer in the first place. And we can’t ever forget about the iconic Queen of Hearts, right? This lady knows what she wants, and we’re all here for it in this day and age. And then the Cheshire Cat, who embodies the word “incognito”. He’s a clever fellow who never ceases to make you wonder whether you’ve been doing something wrong or right your entire life.
So, although this inquisitive story may never seem to make sense, it’s a heck of an entertaining ride, and I’m positive that at least one of these pieces is going to make you stay for the long haul. I promise you when I say that it is a whimsical path to escaping the reality as we know it. If you would not like to read a book without stress or time-management… I don’t really know what to tell you. Just read a book at least. Okay, bye.