Frame of Reference

Annette Goldsmith, editor

Welcome to our end-of-the-century issue, in which we offer the usual eclectic mix of essay, adventure and gossip. We're very pleased to bring you another engaging scholarly article in Alice's Academy, the refereed section: Fernando J. Soto takes a second look at a seminal scene in Alice in Wonderland, and discovers (among other things) that the Tea-Party may be Mad, but the Hatter is not! This has dire implications for The Looking Glass, since we employ a Mad Hatter to gather gossip for Spyglass. Should he henceforth be known as just the Hatter, or should the Mad moniker remain? And there's yet another Lewis Carroll connection in this issue: Sharon McQueen's delightful "Annotated Pyrocodex", a books-and-censorship "Jabberwocky" parody, marks the return of In the Twinkling of an Eye.

Accompany Martha Scott, aka the Dodo, on an exciting Caucus-Race adventure tour through teen literature websites. If you stop at Eliza T. Dresang's Radical Change page en route, you'll find out what's hot in children's literature theory. To switch from theory to practice, visit My Own Invention, in which Gail Goodwin describes an innovative project that surmounted socioeconomic barriers to link schools, children and a particular author.

A passion for best books lists seems to be part of the millennial fever, and The Looking Glass is not immune. In Looking Glass Lore, Jeffrey Canton checks out the Vancouver Public Library's choices of best Canadian children's books, and invites you to submit your own favourites. Good news for fans of Joanne Schott's Double Acrostic X-6— it's now up! As promised, it's diabolically difficult — I found it considerably harder than Natalie Babbitt's acrostic in the September/October 1999 Horn Book. (If you were stumped by Joanne's last acrostic, we have the answers to X-5 as well.) At long last, At long last, publisher Sue Easun returns to continue her Personal Reflections on The Unreluctant Years by Lillian H. Smith. And though Shandel Gamer's Alice's Academy article on David Wisniewski's Golem has gone Down the Rabbit Hole (i.e. into the archives), you can now revisit it to see the illustration we've added.

We've kept a few favourite columns to round out this issue on the cusp of the millennium. Mary Beaty's Monitor looks ahead with a rousing call for information advocacy. Picture Window, by Margo Beggs, looks back to the work of nineteenth-century artist Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon. We couldn't consign Gabi Kupitz's Pig and Pepper to the archives until you'd tried all those delicious treats in her bibliographic essay on children's books with recipes… How about a millennial party with food from children's books? Happy New Year and warm holiday wishes from all of us at The Looking Glass.

Annette Goldsmith is a Canadian children's librarian with the Miami-Dade Public Library System. She spends a lot of time reading, reviewing, sharing and promoting children's and young adult books, both in person and online.

Volume 3, Issue 3, The Looking Glass, 1999

Site design and content, except where noted, © The Looking Glass, 1998. Send all mail regarding The Looking Glass c/o The Toronto Centre for the Study of Children's Literature. Images © Bernard Kelly, 1997. (Tenniel images in the public domain.) "Editorial" © Annette Goldsmith, 1999. Last update February 1, 2013.