Oh, how I long for those days of innocence, when I could trust in all that I held dear and holy. When I thought a Transformers movie would be a great idea; when I truly believed that Buffy and Angel could be together someday; when I could rely on Heroes to be, oh, at least kinda interesting. And a big part of my naiveté had to do with the Disney Studio. See, as a youngster, they taught me that Snow White had an evil sorceress for a step-mother, that Cinderella had a fairy Godmother for a, uh, godmother, and that a young lady called Alice went to Wonderland in her dreams one day, and met there the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, with whom she celebrated her un-birthday.

Disney lied! About that last part, at any rate. Gasp!

I can't quite understand why I never knew this, or why this never even occurred to me. I mean, I had read the fairy tale behind The Little Mermaid, so I knew that the whole Ariel-Prince Eric hook up was something of an artistic liberty. I'd read Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast, and a host of other stories about beauties whose princes someday came. And since they were all old, old tales, ripe for revision and, let's face it, not exactly offering endings to make you go "ahhh", it didn't occur to me to argue with the happy-ever-afters being assisted by singing mice and the occasional dancing cavalcade of cutlery.

But for some reason, despite the voraciousness of my reading habits throughout what I like to pretend is a life, I didn’t get around to reading the original, non-Golden Book version of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland till I was well past the age where perhaps I should have. I've now read it several times, and all I can say is… cool.

We all know the basic story (if not, as I have recently discovered, the entirety of it). Little blonde girl is dozing in a meadow with her cat Dinah when she sees a waistcoat-clad White Rabbit rush past exclaiming that he is late. She, naturally enough, follows the tardy bunny down a very, very deep whole, at the bottom of which she discovers a little door. Through that door is Wonderland, which she can only reach by shrinking herself with the assistance of convenient shrinking refreshments. And later, she gets larger again. Then there's this whole thing about a mystic caterpillar, a tea party, the Queen of Hearts, a croquet match using flamingos (animal rights activists, unite against Flamingo Croquet!) and a trial… and that's not even mentioning that enigmatic Cheshire Cat, who can materialize anywhere at will. What an elegantly contrived, wondrously chaotic, perfectly lovely story it is, too.

The first thing I thought upon concluding it, however, was that I had accidentally bought the abridged version. So much Alice that I remembered seemed to be missing, and I knew my imagination wasn't good enough to have conjured up that stuff. But then I read Through the Looking-Glass, Alice's continued adventures, and it was all explained.

Through the Looking-Glass finds our Alice being all other-worldly again, but instead of down a hole she goes through a mirror into a slightly askew locale in which the lion and the unicorn fight for the crown, Humpty Dumpty falls from his wall, and we hear of the Jabberwocky and the Walrus, cabbages and kings. There's also a giant, and inexplicable, chess game afoot. It's witty and suspenseful, surreal and yet actual, well-crafted melodrama blended perfectly with satire… so very entertaining.

Ah! I exclaimed. I see! Those clever, sneaky fellows at Mouse Central had combined elements from the two books to create their little gem that they, regardless, called Alice in Wonderland, even though Alice was clearly through the looking-glass when she, as for example, learned of un-birthdays.

This got me to thinking. Does this mean that Disney has lied about other things, as well? Is there no Bambi, no Davy Crockett, no kids from Witch Mountain? What about Herbie, did he really go bananas, and did that guy turn into a shaggy dog, or were those shameless untruths as well? Sure, I knew they'd let the fact-checking go a little in their more recent endeavors, what with Pocahontas not having a talking willow in her circle of friends, Hercules not really being all that good of a guy, and there actually being a proper Princess in The Princess and the Frog (who was emphatically not from New Orleans). But those cherished memories of my childhood I had held as sacred, and they are now tarnished forever.

But that's okay. More than okay, really. It's a joy to discover that a story I had thought so familiar can be all shiny and new again. It was a revelation to dive into Carroll's simple, yet complex prose… even the academic-y footnotes are interesting here, as so many of Carroll's characters, metaphors and poems are parodies, references and allusions to persons living and dead. (Well, okay, mostly dead.) The in-jokes are more prevalent than in your average Supernatural episode. Dated it may be, but out-dated, never, and the fact that I can continue to discover the pleasures of this ostensibly child's tale at my advanced age actually makes me grateful for a childhood deprived of it.

So, I guess, thanks for lying to me, Disney. I appreciate it. Really. Um… so... anything you want to tell me about The Jungle Book?

  -- Rachel Hyland