Alice, a curious girl bored on a summer afternoon, follows a White Rabbit and tumbles down a rabbit-hole into a world that bends logic. As she falls, she wonders about maps, marmalade jars, and how far down she’ll go—an early hint that Wonderland will treat everyday rules like toys. Once inside, she drinks and eats things that change her size, meets talking animals, and tries to make sense of rules that keep shifting beneath her feet.
Each chapter sets up a new social puzzle: a pool of tears that becomes a sea to swim, a caucus-race with no clear winner, a Caterpillar who answers questions with more questions, and a tea party stuck at six o’clock where grammar is a game and Time is a person who took offense. The Cheshire Cat smiles without a body, the Duchess insists that everything has a moral, and the Queen of Hearts solves every problem by shouting for heads to roll.
By the end, Alice lands in a courtroom where evidence is nonsense and verdicts come after sentences. When she finally pushes back—calling her accusers “nothing but a pack of cards”—the dream shatters. She wakes on the riverbank beside her sister, carrying away a child’s clear lesson: growing up means learning which rules are worth obeying, which ones are silly, and how to keep your sense when the world goes strange.
Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
fromAlice’s Adventures in WonderlandbyIf everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.
fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby“What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby“I don’t think …” “Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.
fromAlice’s Adventures in WonderlandbyTake care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.
fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby“It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits.”
fromAlice’s Adventures in WonderlandbyFor, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’
fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
fromAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandby