In 6th grade, I was obsessed with Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. When my kids reached 5th grade (I think), for their book and a movie I assigned my favorite book and the kids were not as excited by it as I was. With that, I opted not to assign Alice Through the Looking Glass, and besides, there were so many others I wanted them to read. Then Princess fell in love with the musical Wonderland (my fault, I introduced her) and she decided to create her own Alice Through the Looking Glass book club over the summer.
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Alice Through the Looking Glass
It’s been approximately six months since the events of Alice in Wonderland, and Alice wonders what might happen when she travels through the looking glass. Once she has, she has to travel across the chessboard to get home.
Alice Through the Looking Glass book club
For all that very few people have actually read the book now, it’s got quite the impact on our culture as we talk about going through the looking glass or reference “Are we the dream or the dreamer?” and several other ideas I can’t recall offhand.
But, Princess and I discussed how similar the book was to Wonderland the musical and how they changed characters to fit the story they wanted.
I go back and forth on how I feel about that. On the one hand, I really like the White Knight’s songs, but also in the book, he’s like this grandfather figure…
But, if you want something that is more critiquing the book and discussing it rather than the comparison the two of us had with the musical…
a library’s book club questions
And the other sources I found were actually generic Alice book clubs, and they are two separate books, so I’m not linking to them.
Alice Through the Looking Glass snacks
So funny story, we started off watching a video that was on Amazon Prime because I really didn’t want to watch the Johnny Depp monstrosity because I was still mad about the Alice in Wonderland live-action movie and how it stole the plot from Looking Glass Wars and then made that horrible movie. We started off watching this animated version, but very quickly all of my ginormous teens were groaning like I had killed them, so I with much sighing and feeling put upon switched to the Johnny Depp version.
Of course, I’ve since discovered this other live-action version, that looks like it won’t make me want to throw things at the TV.
For all Princess and I were threatening to throw things at the TV while watching the movie, the Alice Through the Looking Glass snacks were fun.
- Unicorn- in the book, there’s an entire chapter from the Lion and the Unicorn nursery rhyme, so I found some Unicorn food since that is all the rage now. It was pink and full of sugar
- Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee- sour patch kids
- Pudding cake- this delicious caramel toffee something cake, which is apparently an HEB/Central Market specialty, so you may not be able to get it unless you want to pay obnoxious amounts for it
- My Own Invention- the White Knight was fond of creating his own inventions, and all throughout his chapter talks all about it, so we grabbed random leftover snacks and piled them up into our own invention
- Vorpal blade- licorice
- Living Backwards- cookie dough bites I found somewhere
- Crown me!- I cut sugar cookies into a crown shape
- Lion- a lion cookie, from this cookie cutter set
- Humpty Dumpty- candy eggs, I linked to Robin Eggs because I like them better than whatever I found at the time. Also, I totally could have done deviled eggs for sure
- Chess- Chessmen cookies
I couldn’t find a good meal to have with this book, but it was still fun.
More 5th-grade book and a movie combos
- Artemis Fowl book club
- The Sign of the Beaver book club
- Nancy Drew book club
- The Giver book club
- Howl’s Moving Castle book club
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