Alice aux Pays des Merveilles - Grand Album Hachette

What may at first resemble a Big Golden Book is in fact something altogether different. This is the Alice book from the Grand Album Hachette series, shown here with the dust jacket, of which I have only seen one.

Generally the book is found without the jacket, but the cover has essentially the same art, albeit more colorful. Note that this is the same cover art as the BGB from Spain seen here.

This book is listed in the Hachette Christmas supplement seen in this post. This book lists Belgium as its origin, and I will admit that I've gotten most of my various copies of this book over the years from Belgium. But I have to imagine that it was also available in France.

Another odd thing about this book: there are two distinct sizes for it. In general it is about the size of a BGB (approximately 9.25 x 12.5 inches), but there are copies out there that are about 1/4" smaller in both width and height. All other details about the book are the same including the printing information. Could it be that these different sizes are specific to the country in which they were sold? Weird.

What's especially cool about this book is that the interior art is totally different, and very colorful, although the individual renderings can be a little odd at times, for instance...


You can get a feel of the pastel quality of the art from this image of Alice falling down the rabbit hole. It is a fairly standard image, but the rendering is unique.