What is in a name

Alice goes through the looking glass. 

   When I created my online children’s review journal back in the early years of internet publishing, I decided to call it Through the looking Glass Book Reviews. The reason for this is that in the book Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found there a child called Alice steps through a mirror and enters a world where extremely bizarre things happen. Alice talks to a tiger lily flower and a sheep, and a red queen chess piece gives her advice that has puzzled and delighted writers, philosophers, and others for over a hundred years. It felt so right that a journal celebrating books for young readers should have a name that comes from a book that has tickled the fancy of so many people from all over the world for so long. 

   The title for this column comes from the poem that is found at the beginning of Alice in Wonderland. In the poem Lewis Carroll describes how he went out in a little boat on a “golden afternoon.” With him are his young friends Alice Liddel and her two sisters. Knowing that their grownup friend is a weaver of tales they 

"beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather! 

Yet what can one poor voice avail

Against three tongues together?

One child orders that he "begin it," a second hopes "There will be nonsense in it," and the third "interrupts the tale / Not more than once a minute."

And so the tale begins with 

"The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new

In friendly chat with bird or beast -

And half believe it true."

I have a deep affection for this poem and for the story that it prefaces. Like Lewis Carroll and his young listeners, I have punted on the Cherwell River in Oxford sharing stories with my friends. We students took many a picnic on many a riverbank on summer days, when dragonflies skimmed the water nearby and other punters floated past waving. I must admit here that there were times when one too many Pimms Cups were consumed by us boaters, and it was not uncommon to see one or two undergraduates floating amongst the irate swans. This beverage is a firm favorite in Oxford in the summer, and its light flavor and fruit and cucumber garnishes hide a drink that can leave the consumer somewhat unsteady on their feet.

When the idea for this column came to me I was just surfacing after being struck down first by Covid, and then  by Long Covid. I am still in recovery mode, but I am ready for adventures again, both those in the outside world and those within the covers of books. I know that I will discover "wonders wild and new" all around me, and feel that my escape from the fiendish virus has made me even more appreciative of the extraordinary world that we live in.  

A punting outing.