Reflections on Playing and Puzzling with Alice and Tom

This chapter is a consideration of the significance of play and puzzlement in reading as a child and also how such reading history has an effect on thinking in adult life. This is a reflection on the development of processes of thinking through the interaction between text and play combined with the added effect of intergenerational social interaction considering the ways in which thinking and attitudes are developed beyond the formalities of education. The argument is developed through discussion of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863).