Did you read and enjoy Lewis Carroll"s Alice in Wonderland books as a child? Or better still, did you have someone read them to you? Perhaps you discovered them as an adult or, forbid the thought, maybe you haven"t discovered them at all! Those who have journeyed Through the Looking Glass generally love or shun the tales for their unparalleled sense of nonsense . Public interest in the books--from the time they were published more than a century ago--has almost been matched by curiosity about their author. Many readers are surprised to learn that the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat...
happen. "You"re a serpent; [says the Pigeon] and there"s no use denying it. I suppose you"ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!" "I have tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice... "But little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know."

Ethel Rowell, to whom Dodgson taught logic when she was young, wrote that she was grateful that he had encouraged her to "that arduous business of thinking." While Lewis Carroll"s Alice books compel us to laugh and to wonder, we are also easily led, almost in spite of ourselves, to think as well.