ALICE COLLECTORS: Natalia Bragaru

part 1/2 

@kidsbookexplorer 

www.kidsbookexplorer.com

 Based in Australia and born in Moldova, Natalia Bragaru is a passionate explorer of illustrated literature who turns each book into a window of wonder. A finance professional by training, she transformed her analytical precision into a refined curatorial eye through her blog KidsBookExplorer, an acclaimed space where more than 150,000 visitors have discovered her thoughtful reviews and visual journeys. 

Her collection began around 2012, when her five-year-old son played the White Rabbit in a children’s theatre adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Searching for the perfect illustrated edition for their reading sessions, Natalia fell down the rabbit hole herself, from Helen Oxenbury to Maggie Taylor, from Robert Ingpen to surrealist artists like Švankmajer and Silberman. Today, she owns over 100 editions of Alice, 70 original artworks mainly by Australian and Russian illustrators, and a few rare Snarks that add a touch of mystery to her shelves. 

 Here we show part of her collection displayed on bookshelves and in thematic arrangements, often grouped by country, as well as her brilliant sculpture inside a book, a piece that evokes Robert Ingpen’s Magic Bookcase. Her interviews with artists such as Gavin L. O’Keefe have been published in Knight Letter, the journal of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. 

Natalia represents the Savvy Reader type of collector: one who integrates Alice into a broader constellation of art and children’s literature. Her Wonderland is not only a personal collection but also a space of learning, inspiration, and dialogue where stories continue to expand the imagination of all who enter. 

In addition to her curatorial work, Natalia has served as a Judge for the 2024 and 2025 Book of the Year Awards by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, in the categories of Picture Books and New Illustrator. These awards, among the most prestigious and long-standing in Australia, have been held annually since 1946, reflecting her deep engagement with the world of contemporary illustration and storytelling.

 

 

 

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: The Alice in Wonderland Princess

 @thealiceinwonderlandprincess

 A living fairytale unfolds in her world. Performer and part-time solicitor for the British Parliament, she moves between two realities: one ruled by legal codes and another guided by imagination. She does not simply love Alice in Wonderland. She becomes Alice. Through photos, videos and performances, she steps into her alter ego and creates immersive scenes where fantasy and memory intertwine. Her journey began when she was only three years old, listening to her father read the story aloud. Those moments became her first steps into Wonderland. 

Today, her house, affectionately named Lyndhurst after the town where the real Alice is buried, has turned into a luminous Wonderland museum. Every room glows with pastel colors, teapots, dolls, dresses, mirrors and jewelry that echo the magic of Disney’s 1951 film and the nostalgic charm of vintage treasures. Collecting, for her, is an act of love and remembrance. Each new piece keeps her father’s imagination alive and every shelf holds part of their shared story. 

She calls Alice her alter ego, a reflection of curiosity, courage and boundless imagination. And every single day, she wears something that embodies Alice, a ribbon, a charm, a dress, as if the story itself were stitched into her daily life. Her aesthetic is theatrical and enchanting, filled with carefully staged photos, costumes and videos that captivate thousands of followers. She not only embodies Alice but also transforms into other beloved Disney princesses such as Rapunzel, Aurora, Belle, Ariel, Cinderella and Snow White, creating a living gallery of fairytale identities. 

As a performer, she has brought Alice to life in beautiful estate gardens, in Disneyland, in London, Switzerland and France, enchanting audiences wherever she appears. Beyond collecting, she performs across different worlds of fantasy, blending Disney heritage, performance art and a deeply personal devotion to storytelling. What she dreams of now is to keep expanding this magical universe through new connections, friendships and ever more wonder. For her, Wonderland is not just a story. It is home.

ALICE COLLECTORS: Kristina, the time traveler of wonderlands

@alicesadventurescollection 

 Kristina’s collection is a living bridge between centuries, a library of dreams where antique editions meet contemporary creations. Originally from Lithuania and now based in the USA, she began collecting around 2019, drawn by a childhood fascination with Alice’s courage to be curious and different. Curious, careful and disciplined, she maintains coherence in the creation of her posts like a true cataloguer. 

Her shelves trace an atlas of illustrators, mapping Alice’s global journey through time, style and imagination. Rare old books share space with signed editions and artistic interpretations from all over the world. What matters most to her is not the style, but the artist, especially those she doesn’t yet have. 

She participates in collector groups with an intense exchange of references and information with people from every continent, cultivating deep friendships through this shared curiosity. Her aesthetic is calm and elegant, with books, figures and props photographed with care, creating intimate scenes where every spine and cover tells part of her adventure through wonderlands. 

She treasures the friendships made through collecting, companions who share her devotion to Carroll’s imagination. Her dream item is the edition illustrated by Japanese artist Hiroko Hanna ( @hannalice2023 )

For Kristina, collecting is not about possession but connection. Each book is a mirror reflecting creativity, memory and the timeless joy of following the White Rabbit.

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Yonatan Hyman - A Collection as an Atlas of Imagination

 @collecting_alice / collectingalice.com 

 If you have ever held a vintage edition of Alice in Wonderland with no artist credited and felt that peculiar mix of beauty and mystery, you will feel at home in Yonatan Hyman’s universe. He is the mind behind Collecting Alice, a project that unfolds between Instagram and his website like a quiet archive of visual memory, gathering twentieth-century editions with a focus on illustration history. His passion began around 1995, when he first read Carroll’s Alice in English and fell in love with its wit, absurdity and dry humor. 

What started as curiosity slowly transformed into a meticulous archival practice. From his home in Israel, his shelves now hold Hebrew translations, political parodies, ornate Art Nouveau and Art Deco editions, early color printings and obscure illustrated versions from across the globe. Among his most treasured pieces are editions given to him by his late father, early Punch magazine prints featuring Tenniel’s work, Gwynedd Hudson’s books, and a first printing illustrated by Willy Pogany. 

Among the images he shares, some stand out for their unexpected intimacy, like the wooden chairs he had made while traveling in Malawi, East Africa, around 1996: objects that quietly mark his collecting life. Yonatan’s taste gravitates toward richly designed vintage editions. He is attentive to texture and print quality, to the weight of thick paper, the charm of embossed covers and the quiet dignity of early printing techniques. His captions mix gentle irony, historical insight and tender nostalgia. 

When he posts an anonymous illustration, he often writes: “Ah, the good old days when you could publish a book packed with beautiful art without bothering to name the artist.” His posts invite viewers to look closely, compare visual details and trace the evolution of graphic design across decades. 

Explore more at collectingalice.com, where each edition becomes a small piece of a larger cartography of imagination, mapping the many visual lives of Alice through the eyes of a devoted collector.

 

                      

ALICE COLLECTORS: David, the wanderer of illustrated Wonderlands

 @wonderlandillustrated 

 

Collector, traveler, and researcher, David transforms his Instagram collection into a visual journey through the infinite metamorphoses of Alice. With more than 200 books from around the world and over a thousand posts, his collection celebrates illustration as a living art of transformation, where each edition becomes a portal and each artist a new mirror through which Wonderland reflects itself. He moves between shelves and landscapes with the same curiosity that guided Alice. 

His feed is a dynamic collage of wonder, where books, travels, and encounters are woven into a patchwork of imagination. He photographs Alicedelic places around the world, his images often slightly tilted, escaping the orthogonal order of the ordinary, as if reality itself were leaning toward dream. David also creates short videos on the visual afterlives of Carroll’s stories. Along the way, he meets illustrators such as Oleg Lipchenko, Miraphora Mina, and Eduardo Lima, as well as other collectors who share his passion for the many faces of Wonderland. 

In his own words, “I love the story, the characters, the world, the escapism. I also love how each illustrator and artist can explore the story in their own unique way and how they are so different. It’s exciting to see a new take on the story and rediscover the vintage and classic illustrations and how they inspire future artists.” 

Among the treasures in his library are editions by Robert Ingpen, Chris Riddell, Helen Oxenbury, Christian Birmingham, and David Delamare, as well as a rare French edition illustrated by Daniel Dupuy. His dream book is the Japanese edition by @hannalice2023, whose delicate imagery and subtle surrealism captured his imagination. 

For David, Alice is both memory and metamorphosis, a story that keeps reinventing itself through the hands and eyes of those who dare to imagine. 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Caterina in Wonderland

 @cateaparty 

“Alice is part of me,” she says. “I feel a lot like her. It contains many things that I love.” 

Caterina turns her collection into a poetic ritual. In her photos, dolls, books and scenes of tea and forest blend daily gestures with dreamlike reverie. An Italian interior designer, she began collecting in 2003 and now shares her Wonderland through more than 150 posts to more than 2000 followers on Instagram. 

A careful cosplayer, she often dresses as Alice and performs within her own photos, creating her personal Wonderland where fiction and life intertwine. Her collection is eclectic, mixing books, dolls, costumes, makeup, miniatures and themed objects, with a special affection for Disney interpretations. 

Her feed is a cabinet of imagination where books, teacups, mirrors and memorabilia appear like still-life scenes of wonder. Each image is composed with the precision of a set designer and the sensibility of a storyteller, evoking the spirit of the Mad Tea Party and the intimacy of secret diaries. She collects modern and vintage editions, organizing her shelves by color, turning them into chromatic landscapes of fantasy.

 For Caterina, collecting Alice is also about belonging to a community of Mad Hatters and kindred spirits, a place where riddles, trades and discoveries are constantly shared. “I hope to bring a little magic to the people who follow me ✨,” she writes, and her photographs do exactly that, transforming collecting into a tender form of self-portrait and a celebration of curiosity, beauty and the art of keeping enchantment alive. 

The last image, a dreamy illustration that she uses as her Instagram avatar: perfectly condenses her world of wonder: intimate, playful and luminously Alicean.

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Jules and the Art of Becoming Who You Are

 @ fortheloveofalice_ 

 

Among the new generation of Carrollian collectors, Jules shines with rare harmony between passion and creation. Her collection began in 2009, inspired by the Disney film, and soon expanded into a lifelong devotion to all things Alice. What started as a childhood fascination became an artistic vocation, and she is now illustrating her own Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, reimagined through the dreamlike landscapes of Los Angeles, where she lives. 

Her shelves combine vintage and modern editions, catalogued with care and often arranged by color, turning her library into a chromatic landscape of wonder. Among her treasures is a rare edition illustrated by A. E. Jackson, alongside other vintage gems such as the elusive edition by John R. Neill, which links her love for Alice to her passion for Oz. 

As an artist, Jules values editions that reveal both beauty and intention: unique covers not repeated inside, illustrations that flow through the story, and characters whose style expresses imagination and individuality. 

For Jules, Alice became a language of self-discovery. As a trans woman, dressing as Alice was part of her journey toward authenticity, a step toward inhabiting her own truth. Her collection reflects that unfolding, a luminous archive where identity and imagination continue to grow together. Among the photos of her collection, one image stands apart: the puppy from Wonderland, the only illustration by Jules herself.

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Gavin O’Keefe

@ groonster

 

 

 

 Gavin L. O’Keefe embodies a dual role in the world of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: he is both a passionate collector and one of the most distinctive illustrators of Carroll’s classic. As a collector, O’Keefe began his journey in 1986, long before the internet shaped today’s collecting networks. His tastes gravitate toward gothic, surreal and disturbing editions, inspired early on by illustrators such as Mervyn Peake, John Tenniel, and Ralph Steadman. 

His collection spans modern and artistic editions, translations, rare books, and works by contemporary artists. Among his most treasured items is the Inky Parrot Press edition of Alice illustrated by Willy Pogany, while his dream acquisition remains Trevor Brown’s Alice. For him, Alice symbolizes resilience and the courage to face adversity, a figure of personal and universal growth. As an illustrator, O’Keefe’s engagement with Wonderland has unfolded in three distinct phases:

 • The GO Alice (Carroll Foundation, 1990), with intricate pen-and-ink drawings infused with Celtic, surreal, and historical intertexts, creating a Wonderland of dark humor and mystery. 

 • The Alice Books (Ramble House, 2010), combining new illustrations for both Wonderland and Looking-Glass, with more open compositions and a streamlined, three-dimensional aesthetic. 

• A forthcoming full-color edition, exploring emotional expressiveness and visual richness, weaving together references from Cold War science and politics to sixteenth- and nineteenth-century imagery. 

For O’Keefe, Alice’s world transcends anachronism, existing across multiple dimensions of time.