I would recommend this book for no one younger than 12 - and a very mature 12 at that. It occupies the space between child and adult literature in a way I've never quite experienced before. So much so that it's left me a bit uncomfortable. Honestly I'd say it's more of an adult book written as though it is for children. Most obviously, it is full of grad-school level vocabulary, obscure words and spellings, and significant violence. But it's also brimming with the sort of uncanny skin-crawling unease that I'm sure Victorian children's literature is full of, but about which the authors were not being quite as intentional as I'm positive Ms. Valente is being here. But I like that. I think it's the job of truly new literature to take a previous form's implicit truths and make them explicit. Perhaps scholars 100 years from now will dredge up some implicit truths from this book that our deepest subconscious minds can only begin to contemplate in the year 2014. This book might be that good. Or it might be a bunch of indulgent nonsense from an English major who just loves Lewis Carroll.