The mind-blowingly informative Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece (Oak Knoll in cooperation with the LCSNA) is here! Read about the magnificent three-volume set (Essays, Back Translations, and Checklists), which discusses translations into 174 languages and dialects, on its website. Oak Knoll is offering a 10% discount to our members here. Our sincerest congratulations to general editor Jon Lindseth, technical editor Alan Tannenbaum, and the 260 writers and editors who contributed to this extraordinary scholarly yet readable work, a successor to Warren Weaver’s Alice in Many Tongues (1964). It will be celebrated at a two-day conference at Alice150 this October, and an exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York, September 16 – November 21, 2015. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Red Dragon #4 (August 1948) is a comic so rare that it only rated a note (p. 71), not a listing, in the definitive Pictures and Conversations: Lewis Carroll in the Comics, as none of the authors had ever seen a copy, which sells for $200-$500 these days. Fortunately, we all can have a b&w reproduction of the story, along with an article about its creator, Edd Cartier, as they now appear in The Shadow , Volume 86, by Sanctum Books (2014), obtainable at Bud Plant for $15. Cartier also illustrated the story “Jabberwocky Thrust” in Shadow Mystery magazine (Oct. – Nov. 1947).

The wonderfully printed and thrillingly oversized (21.6 x 16.9 inches; 55 x 43 cm.) Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915 ($125 list) reproduces both the teaser page for the first instance of Alice in the “funny pages” (“Alice’s Adventures in Funnyland,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, November 10, 1901 — yes, the “Alfred E. Neuman” lookalike) and a page from Buddy Tucker Meets Alice in Wonderland (1906). (The “Funnyland” page and a similar page from Buddy Tucker are in Alice in Comicland [$30 list] although at a smaller size.) The rest of the book is wonderful as well; Chris Ware calls it, “a mind-blowing portable museum retrospective of the raw, tangled ferocity and frustration that went into the making of America.”

New Horizons, NASA’s mission to Pluto, has been “geeking out” labeling all interesting features on the dwarf planet Pluto and its supersized moon Charon with unofficial names, many of which were submitted to the IAU (International Astronomical Union), as they are currently meeting in Honolulu and who can make them official. Not surprisingly, many geek idols from Dr. Who to our own Alice (in the Western Region of Charon, on the right of the image at left) have been proposed. Click here for a fun article on the subject!

Always a local angle. When the (now dwarf) planet was discovered by  Clyde Tombaugh, Venetia Burney (1918-2009, right), who was then 11, suggested the name “Pluto” to her grandfather Falconer Madan, who passed the name along to Herbert Hall Turner, an astronomer with the Royal Astronomical Society. Clyde Tombaugh liked the name because it started with the initials of Percival Lowell, who had predicted the existence of Planet X.

Falconer Madan of Oxford, Librarian of the Bodleian among many other titles, was, of course, a devoted Carrollian. He helped Sidney Herbert Williams revise his A Bibliography of Lewis Carroll (London: The Bookman’s Journal, 1924), the first such, into A Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), receiving co-author credit, and published a supplement thereto in 1935.

We do hope the name “Alice Crater” will be duly authorized. “Twinkle, twinkle…”

How can one resist? Well, it only comes in smaller adult sizes, for one. Its full name is “Vans Authentic Liberty Wonderland Skate Shoe.”  You may have to look around online or visit your local Vans dealer; Amazon lists it here.

As many of us know, in addition to being the founder of the Sociedade Lewis Carroll do Brasil, Adriana Peliano is a genuinely talented artist. Her dreamy, “alicedelic” illustrations are collages based on colored Tenniels and the work of other creatives, often made kaleidoscopic, and full of puzzles and paradoxes. The two books are combined and have just been published in a handsome, colorful, luminous volume by Zahar in Brazil (the text is in Portuguese, of course).

The easiest thing to do is to order it by emailing Adriana. The book is US$29 and postage to the U.S. is about $11. She can do it through PayPal.*

Most highly recommended!

P.S. Yes, the cover just says Wonderland; if you flip the book over, Looking-glass is the back cover.

* Or you can order from the Livraria Cultura bookshop or the publisher, Zahar, if your Portuguese is up to it. Costs are roughly the same.

An extraordinary edition of Wonderland is being published as a 150th Anniversary treat. Each page is illustrated by a different artist from around the globe! (There will be 150 pages, not so coincidentally.) The project, which benefits art instruction for Mongolian and Chinese children, is funded through Indegogo. Watch an introductory video here. The book will be released in December at a $99 price; the first 150 are $60, after that it will be $70, so haste is encouraged. The art is most impressive, and it’s for a very good cause. Click here!