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Having just finished Alice in Wonderland, the first thing that occurs to me is that I wish I had read it years ago. I've known the story of Alice for years thanks to Disney, but for some reason I didn't get around to reading this as a child. While I expected to like it, I never realized what a joy this book would be.
Carroll was a logician, so it should come as no surprise that he uses his expertise in that field to create many hilarious logical fallacies. But what interested me the most was the prose; I could talk for a long time of the clean, beautiful concision of Carroll's writing and of the brilliance of his word games and puns.
These things interested the adult reader in me, but Alice is really for children of all ages. Thanks to the animated movie, I knew the characters and I felt like I was being reunited with old friends. I especially felt this during the Mad Tea Party, which I think must rank among the most brilliant comic scenes in English literature. However, Alice proves that books for children need not be dumbed down or sentimentalized. The beautiful concluding paragraph is a startling, meditation on childhood, age, and eventual womanhood.
Alice in Wonderland is indeed a rare kind of book: one which can entertain and enlighten both the child and the adult. Carroll's glittering novel hasn't been dimmed in the slightest by time.
