Down the Rabbit Hole, A Mystical Adventure

This short story is an enchanting tale with a message for all ages, that magic is not an illusion but something we all possess. "Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen." —Goethe The title of this story, "down the rabbit hole," is of course from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), a wonderful children's story by Lewis Carroll in which a charming young girl named Alice falls down a rabbit hole into a strange, dreamlike world. "It was much pleasanter at home," thought Alice, "when one wasn't always being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down the rabbit hole, and yet, and yet..." "Down the rabbit hole" has become a term referring to a situation that is strange or confusing, often mystical or magical, and, in this story, an encounter from which one will emerge with increased knowledge, widened horizons, enriched imagination, and a sense of greatly enlarged possibilities. In Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass (1871), near the end of her encounter with the White Queen, Alice protests that "one can't believe impossible things." The White Queen famously retorts, "I daresay you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Unlike the White Queen, I do not advocate believing impossible things. But it is much to be hoped that this short story and the anthology that follows it will encourage the reader to consider all the possibilities and therefore believe at least one magical thing—perhaps even "before breakfast." This charming fantasy will have you and your children engaged and laughing. Even better, it will leave them with the message…