From its origins to this day, the tradition of both international translation and illustration of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has swung between slavish reverence for the English original and its opposite: a recognition of the revolutionary frame of mind that this classic work represents, one that embodies respect for play and nonsense, of courage in the face of the absurdities of the adult world, and of belief in the dignity of childhood as a period of grace in all of our lives. This will be a romp through several dozen notable and ig-notable Alice interpretations in word and image, from Bulgaria to Japan and from Russia to aboriginal Australia.

About the Speaker: With wife Nina, Jeff co-founded Evanston’s independent bookstore Bookends & Beginnings in 2014. In his earlier life (or lives), he was deputy director of Northwestern University Library, president of the jury that awards the Hans Christian Andersen medals, and a librarian at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Munich, and has published articles in American Libraries, Library Quarterly, the Times Educational Supplement—and, of course, the Knight Letter, the newsletter of The Lewis Carroll Society of North America.