Fantasy · Children
Through the Looking-Glass
Alice climbs through a mirror into a land laid out like a chess board, where everything runs backwards.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Alice moves as a pawn
On a snowy November afternoon, Alice is curled up in an armchair, scolding her kitten, when she starts to wonder what the room behind the mirror is like. She climbs onto the mantelpiece and finds the glass melting away like mist. On the other side everything is reversed: books are printed backward, and to reach a place you have to walk away from it. The countryside is laid out in squares like a chess board, and Alice joins the game as a pawn, hoping to reach the eighth square and become a queen. Lewis Carroll published the sequel in 1871, six years after the first.
Why it works for learners
This is a book about language, which makes it a gift to learners. Humpty Dumpty explains the nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” word by word and insists that a word means just what he chooses it to mean. The White Queen has practiced believing six impossible things before breakfast. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Lion and the Unicorn and the White Knight each turn a familiar rhyme or idea upside down. The episodes are short, and each has a clear shape.
The catch is that many of the jokes are about words, so they have to be reinvented in every language. That part is best enjoyed at higher levels.
Which level to start at
B2 is the best start for the wordplay; B1 works for the adventure and the characters, which stay vivid at any level. Humpty Dumpty would approve of the card you get when you tap a word: it tells you what the word means in this sentence, not in general.
Read next
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where it all began
- Peter Pan, another child who crosses into a world of its own
- The Man Who Was Thursday, a grown-up nightmare with its own strict logic