The Looking Glass Wars

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor was a book that took a different angle at the classic story of Alice in Wonderland. The book was not just a lighthearted, wacky story about an English girl that stumbles down a rabbit hole and ends up in a world with talking caterpillars known as Wonderland. She is Wonderland’s heir to the throne and her mother, Genevieve, is the queen. Genevieve’s sister, Redd, is bent on revenge after being kicked out of the castle. She storms the castle and forcefully takes the throne, and Alyss is sent into another world and tries to find her way back to Wonderland to take back the throne. In order to do this, she has to gain a lot of responsibility starting from her childhood in Wonderland, teenage years in England,

Here, Alyss learned that she would need to live up to the real world responsibilities that people have to live up to everyday. Once in England, she was staying with a family that constantly tormented her about her claims of living in Wonderland, which caused her to lose faith in the place where she grew up and had to treat her beliefs and childhood as if they did not exist in order to live a normal life. Alyss even said, “Yes, it was a solution… Become just like everyone else.” (148) She began to accept the life of a normal girl and took on responsibilities like getting married. “If she’d had time to think about it, Alice might have stopped herself, considering the idea too whimsical. But the words had a force of their own, and only after she said them aloud did she realize just how appropriate the idea was. ‘Let’s have a masquerade.’” (172) At this point in time, Alyss Heart, or Alice Liddell, had just begun to take on the responsibility that any young adult would take at her

One of them even said, “‘If we are successful against Redd, no one can say that our success is without sacrifice. But I sometimes wonder if it has required too much of us.’” (302) Alyss used her imagination to defeat Redd and defeated her for the good of the kingdom, not revenge. After Redd’s rule was over, Alyss proclaimed, “‘It will be rebuilt,’ she said. Dodge nodded. ‘No one will be forgotten, Dodge. Not Sir Justice, not the lowliest card soldier, no one.’” (357) Overall, Alyss had gained all of the responsibility she needed in order to be a wonderful ruler of Wonderland. She had gained a lot of responsibility from her adventure and all of her responsibility was