Down the Rabbit Hole

Ok, here’s my list of references to “down the rabbit hole.”

page 85: when Ingrid is trying to break into Cracked-up Katie’s house to steal back her soccer cleats, and she pushes open the basement window, gets facedown on the ground, wriggles back into the opening feetfirst. “She could just let go.  Alice, down the rabbit hole.”

page 97: when Ingrid is running from the police in the woods in the middle of the night, and finds herself on the top of a hill overlooking the Falls, on the opposite bank from Prescott Hall, “Griddie, deep down the rabbit hole.”

page 328: the conversation between Vincent and Ingrid at the special rehearsal, the two of them alone in Prescott Hall,

“I know, but I still think it’s meant to be a fun thing.”

“A fun thing?”

“The whole story of Alice,” said Ingrid.  “Falling down the rabbit hole, having all those adventures.”

“Not all adventures are fun…”

page 357: when Ingrid goes back to Prescott Hall in the middle of the night and decides to climb in through the cat door, “This one was big enough for a real big cat, maybe even big enough for a girl Ingrid’s size.  She tried it—yes, just big enough.  She wriggled through to the other side: down the rabbit hole.”

Hmmm…there are only 4.  I can’t find the 5th one.  If you find it, let me know.

Down the Rabbit Hole

How many different references can you find to going down the rabbit hole?  Does it always mean the same thing?  I found 5, not counting the original reference in the book Alice in Wonderland.  Check back later to compare notes.

About the Author: Peter Abrahams

I was born at a time when the last woolly mammoths still walked the earth. My mother taught me most of what I know about writing. She got a pretty good idea that she'd better make me into a writer—since I'd never succeed at anything else—when my preschool teacher told her the following story:

One rainy day the teacher took my class on a make-believe walk. We were indoors, the walk was real, and the sights were not. For example: "A car's coming class," my teacher said. "Everybody stop." We came to a puddle. "Here's a puddle," my teacher said. Everyone walked it around but me. I plodded straight through. "Petey, what about the puddle?" my teacher asked. "I've got boots on," I said.

There you have the nascent writer: uncooperative, attention-seeking, and tiresome. My mother rolled with it.

I graduated from Williams College with an actual degree and went to work as a spearfisherman in the Bahamas. Later I worked a bit in radio, and found I was better suited to working on my own—and what could be more alone than writing? So far I've written 22 novels. These include 17 crime fiction novels, among them Oblivion; End of Story; Lights Out (Edgar best-novel nominee); The Fan (made into a movie with Robert DeNiro); the New York Times bestselling Echo Falls series for middle-schoolers (beginning with Down the Rabbit Hole, an Agatha winner); the new YA Reality Check (2009); and, under the name Spencer Quinn, Dog On It, an New York Times bestseller and first in the Chet and Bernie mystery series. I'm now at work on a YA for publication in 2010 called Bullet Points.

I'm married with four children, most of them now grown-up, or doing a perfect imitation thereof. I live on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, overlooking a salt marsh. We have a great dog named Audrey. She does everything backwards.

reprinted from HarperCollins.com Photo By Dan Cutrona

Review of Down the Rabbit Hole

It’s hard to know where to start. I read this book, the first in the Echo Falls Mystery series, 3 years ago not long after it came out. I read and enjoyed the sequels, Behind the Curtain and Into the Dark, but it wasn’t until I reread Down the Rabbit Hole that I realized how great the first book is. I’ve already quoted my favorite passages, so you can see for yourself how witty the writing is, but I want to tell you, the plot is really well laid out also. The story follows Ingrid, budding actress, talented soccer-player, and devotee of Sherlock Holmes, in the aftermath of the murder of Echo Falls’ most eccentric resident, Cracked-Up Katie. There are lots of side stories (Why is Ingrid’s football-playing brother, Ty, suddenly so pumped up that he can beat their grandfather at arm wrestling? Will their grandfather stop at nothing to prevent the sale of the family farm? What’s up with the new dark version of Alice in Wonderland that the director who’s replacing the recently-run-over-by-a-piano director, Jill, is making The Prescott Players perform? Can Alice really be menacing?) but they don’t detract from the unfolding of the central mystery. As smart as Ingrid is, she has to make some not-so-smart choices sometimes, but those are believable too.

Some of my favorite quotes from Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams

Ingrid’s thoughts on having her braces adjusted: “Adjustment meant tightening.  Tightening didn’t hurt much while it was happening, but every turn of the screw made a squeaky sound that seemed to come from right inside Ingrid’s head, and reminded her of the Shackleton IMAX movie she’d seen a few weeks before on a class trip –that scene where ice floes slowly crush the ship to death.”

Ingrid’s conversation with the foreign taxi driver: “’You are pressing for time?’ he said… ‘What time is it?’ Ingrid said.  The driver snapped open his cell phone.  ‘Five on top of the button,’ he said.”

Ingrid’s musings about algebra: “X.  All those math people had a big—what was the word?  Mom used it all the time –fetish.  That was it.  Fetish…They made a fetish about x, couldn’t keep their hands off it.”

Ingrid’s thought about old people: “Old people didn’t seem to laugh often, but when they did, they loved it, kind of surprising themselves by how much…”

Ingrid’s description of her complexion: “…not just a regular zit, but a zit with a blackhead in the middle –a one-in-a-million dermatological freak show, maybe the basis for some researcher’s prize-winning paper.”