3 h 27 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 85 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 85 pagesAbout this book
What if running faster keeps you still, and the words you trust refuse to hold their meaning?
Alice climbs through the mirror above her fireplace and enters a country laid out like a chessboard. Here, talking flowers and living chess pieces have rules of their own. A polite but stubborn pawn, Alice wants to cross the board and become a queen—if she can make sense of the game.
In Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll turns each encounter into a playful challenge. The Red Queen hurries Alice along, the White Queen lives backwards, and Humpty Dumpty claims command over words. Beneath the jokes and nonsense lie questions about time, identity, and what it means to be real.
What you’ll discover
- A world beyond the mirror Follow Alice into a chessboard country where familiar things obey wonderfully unfamiliar rules.
- The race that goes nowhere Run beside the Red Queen while the trees and hills stay exactly where they are.
- Words with minds of their own Meet Humpty Dumpty and explore the slippery gap between what words mean and what speakers intend.
- Nonsense worth thinking about Let Jabberwocky and Carroll’s wordplay draw you toward questions hidden inside the laughter.
- A gentle, clumsy companion Spend time with the White Knight, whose kindness accompanies his collection of useless inventions.
Is it for you?
This summary suits anyone who loved Alice in Wonderland as a child, anyone who enjoys wordplay, logic puzzles and nonsense verse, and parents who want to know what they are reading aloud. It may suit you less if you want a plot with hard stakes.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A mirror opens onto a chessboard country
- Running hard only keeps you in place
- Two fat brothers and a sleeping king
- The White Queen lives backwards, and a shop shifts
- Humpty Dumpty makes words obey him
- A lion, a unicorn and a gentle knight
- Words, logic and the rules of nonsense
- How the book is built, from chess to mirror
Who’s who
- AliceA polite, stubborn seven-year-old who climbs through a mirror and wants to cross the chessboard country to become a queen.
- The Red QueenA stern, bossy ruler who explains the rules of the chess land and hurries Alice along the board.
- The White QueenA flustered, kindly queen who lives backwards in time and believes impossible things before breakfast.
- Tweedledum and TweedledeeTwo round, identical brothers who recite poems, quarrel over a rattle and tell Alice she is part of a dream.
- Humpty DumptyA proud egg on a wall who insists that words mean exactly what he chooses and explains Jabberwocky.
- The White KnightA gentle, clumsy knight full of useless inventions who rescues Alice and sees her to the edge of the wood.
- The Lion and the UnicornTwo rival beasts who fight for the White King's crown and treat Alice with suspicion.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 15 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll· 1871
Alice steps through a mirror into a living chess game.
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Language: Deutsch
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 8
A mirror opens onto a chessboard country
The story begins at home on a winter afternoon. Alice is in the drawing room with her old cat Dinah and two kittens, a black one called Kitty and a white one called Snowdrop. She talks to Kitty about the room she can see in the mirror over the fireplace. Perhaps the fire there smokes, she says. Perhaps the books read backwards.
Then she climbs onto the mantelpiece, and the glass turns soft as mist. She steps through and finds herself in the Looking-glass House. The clock on the wall wears a smiling face. The chessmen on the hearth are alive, and they walk about without noticing her. A book on the table holds a poem printed in reverse, so she holds it up to the mirror to read it.
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The author
Lewis Carroll
1832–1898 · English children's writer and mathematician
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born in Cheshire, England, in 1832. He lived and taught mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford. He wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking-Glass (1871), and Sylvie and Bruno (1889). He died in Guildford, England, in 1898.
“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.”
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What is Through the Looking-Glass about?
It follows Alice as she climbs through a mirror into a land laid out as a chessboard. She meets odd characters on each square, such as the Red Queen, Humpty Dumpty and the White Knight, and tries to reach the eighth square.
Is Through the Looking-Glass a sequel to Alice in Wonderland?
Yes. Lewis Carroll published it in 1871 as the follow-up to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It has the same heroine, but a new setting, a chess-game structure, and different characters, so you can read it on its own.
What does the poem Jabberwocky mean?
It is a nonsense poem about a young hero who slays a monster, written with invented words. In the book Humpty Dumpty explains some of them, such as slithy for lithe and slimy. Many have since entered English.
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