For week 2 of Dr Rabkin's  Fantasy and Science Fiction class on coursera, we get to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

I remember my mom reading Alice to me as a child, and I found it somewhat boring and confusing. And I read it to my older son when he was around kindergarten age, and he found it boring and confusing. So I found it quite fun to get to read this book just for me, as an adult, fully able to understand the story while also suffering no interruptions and having to explain.

And Carroll's wordplay is magnificent. While Alice is 7 and a half in the story, I really think kids may need to be closer to 10 to understand what is going on and to understand the wordplay. This book (or these 2 books, since Through the Looking Glass was written and published several years after Alice) is just fun. From Alice's frustration in the first chapter as she shrinks and grows and forgets her key and grows and shrinks again, to the chess game in Through the Looking Glass, it is fun and games as the reader cheers Alice on and hopes she makes the correct choices and remembers her goal.