One of my favorite takes on the Cheshire Cat by Michael Kutsche. Click for a larger view.

Like most of my generation, I saw the Disney film before I read the book, wherein I fell in love with the Cheshire Cat.

Lewis Carroll‘s book is quite a bit darker, which appealed to the teen-age me. But what I liked most was the idea of this oddball girl who liked reading more than she liked doing her chores or whatever else was asked of her.

She was strange. She didn’t fit in well. She was constantly bored by her surroundings and the people around her. So we went in search of adventure.

As a new teenager, that was me. (That was so many of us, was it not?) I was a gifted child and constantly bored. I didn’t fit in well with kids my age. Adults thought it weird to talk to a child as an adult. I was a geeky teen who wanted to fly on dragons in Pern and talk on sunlight as a sunrunner. I escaped into books with every opportunity, even during math class (which I liked).

I think this is why Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and all the films, comics, musicals, etc. it has influenced) has stayed in the now as long as it has—especially among geeky and the scholarly. We’re the oddballs. The weird ones who don’t fit in. The ones who are off chasing rabbits down the rabbit hole.

As a reader, I dove in with Alice. As a writer, now I create the rabbit holes for others to follow. Thank you to all writers for continuing to create new places for us.