Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this isn't a quaint nonsense story like its predecessor: There are violent battles, deaths, and beheadings. The heroine's mother dies.
Families who read this book could compare it to the original. How does the author derive his story from Carroll's very different book? Do his interpretations seem reasonable? It might be fun to try to think up "true" stories behind other favorite tales.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
A sea-change is happening in children's book publishing, taking nearly a decade to come to its logical culmination in this book. Written by a movie producer, plotted and paced like a movie, and promoted like one too, THE LOOKING GLASS WARS is a book designed for one thing -- to grab kids by the seat of the pants and keep them excitedly turning the pages. It accomplishes its goal with verve and imagination.
Alice in Wonderland purists shouldn't even open the book -- this isn't for them. Author Frank Beddor has said, "I guess I didn't realise how beloved Lewis Carroll's classic was. I was just seeking revenge. My grandmother and my mother made me read this book when I was 10 or 11, and I thought it was a terrible girls' book. This is my revenge; I wanted to rewrite it as a book boys would also enjoy."
The book's story is presented, not as a rewrite of that classic work, but as the awful truth that the fey Dodgson turned into a fairy tale, much to Alyss' horror and chagrin. Using snippets of the real Alice Liddell's biography, Beddor fashions an alternative history in which Alice is really Alyss, the escaped and hunted princess of Wonderland.
The Wonderland depicted here is both more horrific and more exciting than the surreal place Dodgson imagined. Filled with monsters, magic, and a mixture of technologies, it's at once more fantastic and more grounded in the reality of war and totalitarian repression than its predecessor.
Though The Looking Glass Wars is filled with topics for discussion (from literature to politics, history, and biography) and includes many parallels to events in today's world, this story is essentially fun -- well-written, well-constructed, lovingly thought-out and produced fun. It will do no harm at all to Carroll's classic -- which has always had more appeal to adults than children anyway -- and may interest a new generation of readers in the original.
From The Book
Before General Doppelganger or Sir Justice Anders had time to act, before even Hatter Madigan could tumble into blade-spinning action, there came shouts and an explosion from outside the dining room. The heavy double doors blew apart, a wall crumbled, and a horde of Redd's card soldiers charged through the blasted opening with swords raised.
Standing amid the crumbled stone and splinters of wood was a nightmare version of Genevieve, a woman Alyss had never seen before.
"Off with their heads!" the woman screamed. "Off with their stinking, boring heads."
Plot Summary:
Forget what you thought you knew about Alice and Wonderland -- this book purports to tell the truth behind the fairy tale.
Alyss, princess of the Queendom of Wonderland, barely escapes with her life when her Aunt Redd kills her parents in a bloody coup. Pursued by The Cat, an assassin created by Redd (a witch-like practitioner of Black Imagination), Alyss jumps through the Pool of Tears and ends up in Victorian London, where, after living as a street urchin and in an orphanage, she's adopted by the Liddell family of Oxford.
Frustrated that no one will believe the story of her past, she's at first thrilled when family friend Charles Dodgson seems to believe her. But when he turns it into a fairy tale, she's devastated and resolves to forget Wonderland and assimilate as a normal British person. Eventually she grows up and forgets about Wonderland, or sees it only as a childish fantasy. But back in Wonderland her persecuted followers, the Alyssians, take up a guerrilla resistance to the harsh rule of Queen Redd.
Related Books:
More Reimaginings of Classic Literature
Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg by Gail Carson Levine
Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth by James V. Hart
Books by Screenwriters
Abarat by Clive Barker
Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce
The Merchant of Death (The Pendragon Series, Book 1) by D. J. MacHale
Seeker (Noble Warriors, Book 1) by William Nicholson
This Is Based On
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Related Web Sites
Official site
MySpace site
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ViolenceBattles with swords, knives, and guns; many deaths, including a beheading. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking and drunkenness, smoking a hookah, imagination-enhancing drugs. |
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