In the days when Gary Gulliver and his sister had first discovered Lilliput, centuries ago in fact, there were two pools which only appeared at very infrequent intervals, when their unique water rose to the surface of the island’s forest. Drinking from one pool would cause permanent reduction of a full sized person to the size of a Lilliputian, unless the reduced person was able to reach the other pool in time and drink the water which had the opposite effect and restore one’s size.
Over the centuries, a number of people had been to the giant land of Brobdingnag, or to the underground land of Wonderland and possibly to the Looking-Glass Land which linked Wonderland and Brobdingnag. Some people had been to Lilliput. Some of these many travelling adventurers had returned to England and had written their adventures down and disguised them as children’s stories. Over the centuries, the stories had become popular folklore, and were repeatedly reprinted and republished.
Most people just read these stories and eventually grew out of them. However, there were a few rare people in each time in earth’s history, who were affected in special ways by these stories. A few boys would find that reading the stories would stimulate a latent but often dormant capacity to derive great excitement and enjoyment from the thought of interacting with giant ladies, specifically the thought of being eaten by them. Some of these boys wanted to be eaten in every sense of the concept. Others would have been happy to have been put through most of the motions, but not to actually conclude their fantasies inside a lady’s tummy.
Conversely a number of girls had grown up, with an increasing desire to enact the reciprocal roles of the boys’ fantasies, namely to simulate eating or even to actually eat tiny boys.
A few other major developments had happened over the intervening years leading up to the late 20th Century as well. In Alice’s time, there were only two known holes to Wonderland: one in the woods and one on her mother’s large estate. Over time, several more of them were gradually discovered in other parts of the world, and kept secret by the ladies and boys who found them. They came out in different underground rooms of Wonderland to the room where Alice and White Robert ended up, but each Wonderland room seemed to have its own supply of cake and water that gave boys the ability to shrink and regrow, and gave girls and ladies the ability to grow and reshrink.
Other beanstalks grew and emerged in different parts of Brobdingnag, as the winds of centuries blew occasional beans to various parts of the world, where they took root and grew into beanstalks.
Finally, over time, other shrinking and growth pools formed in various parts of the world too, growing most naturally in forests, and usually no more than a suburb apart. Unlike the pools on Lilliput, these ones formed in normal sized environments, and did not rise and fall infrequently, but were there all the time. Their size transforming liquids were available at any time of the year to anyone who happened to find them and drink from them.