Falling Into Adventure: portals to another world

Poetry, then pondering on portals.
*disclaimer: I am not a poet, but I like to write haiku once in a while ;)

Falling Into Adventure by Stephanie Ruble

Alice, leaves, rain drops
Falling, falling, falling down
An adventure starts

Corn mazes by day
Apple orchard hide-n-seek
Hayrides by moonlight

Roasted pumpkin seeds
Marshmallow hot chocolate
Caramel apples

As I was writing this poem, I thought it might be a fun writing prompt, especially the first verse. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole and into an adventure. (That must have been a big rabbit hole!) I’ve toyed with a few stories with characters that experience new worlds (or at least worlds new to them). I don’t know if they’ll ever be anything other than writing exercises, but it’s fun to imagine strange and different lands.

Alice is basically a portal story; there are tons of portal stories. The Narnia series has a wardrobe as its link to another world. Dorothy goes to Oz in her house and gets back by clicking her heels. You could even say that the holiday doors in The Nightmare Before Christmas are portals (only 24 more days until Halloween!!!).

What’s your favorite portal story and what is the object or path that leads to the other world?

Have you ever written a portal story (agents say they see a lot of them, so someone has to be writing these stories).

Does anyone know what the first portal story was? I don’t, but I’d like to think it was Alice.

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Book Pick: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – adaptation by Robert Sabuda
Alice’s adventures are captured in pop-up form! Mr. Sabuda has created a stunning puzzle of paper engineering, including a full deck of cards that pops up on the last page. This is not just a few pages of pop-up images from the story. The story is cleverly told through several mini books on each page, which add up to a hefty amount of text (just the right amount to tell us all about Alice’s fun). As a bonus, the mini books contain pop-ups too. This book is for fans of Alice, or fans of paper engineering, or anyone looking for an excuse to leap into another world for a while.