Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass — The Christmas Gift Edition Book Club Kit (Printable PDF)

The working half of the Christmas Gift Edition: everything a family, a book club, or a classroom needs for a Christmas reading of both Alice books, in one printable packet — 44 pages, US Letter, print one copy for the host or one for every reader.

THE CHRISTMAS READING, PLANNED:

• The Twelve Nights in Wonderland plan as the lead reading schedule — twelve sittings, 13 December to Christmas Day, one each evening, sized for reading aloud after supper: Wonderland the first six nights, Through the Looking-Glass the last six, and the final night ending with the envoi poem, read twice.
• A Christmas Eve Read-Aloud: Hosting the Alice Night — a full hosting page for turning the final night into a small event: one narrator or traded pages, something warm in the cup and mince pies at the tea-party chapter, the Spot the Plate game played against the big gift-edition pages (the host reads a caption clue, the children find the Tenniel plate first), and the lights low for the last poem.
• "Our Twelve Nights," a printable record page — a twelve-row table (Night / Date / Readers / Favourite moment) plus the Christmas Day verdict line: who dreamed it? Fill it in as you go and tuck it into the gift edition, next to the presentation page.
• The standard four-meeting reading schedule, retained in full after the Twelve Nights plan, for groups meeting after the holidays — including "Reading It Aloud Together," with guidance for chorus poems, for staging the trial and the caucus-race as mini-plays, and for groups of mixed ages.

THE REFERENCE SHELF:

• Who's Who — sixteen inhabitants of the two books, with the Queen of Hearts, the Red Queen, and the White Queen carefully distinguished, as the books insist they must be.
• The Chapter Map — all twenty-four chapters at a glance, one line each, plus the Looking-Glass chessboard diagram exactly as the 1872 edition printed it.
• The Story of This Edition — the boat trip on the Isis, the hand-written Christmas manuscript of 1864, the first edition suppressed over its own pictures, and what this edition restored, and what it left out, and why.
• The Five Explainers, Condensed — the parodies decoded, the logic and language games, the chess problem with Carroll's own move list, nonsense as a genre, and how Tenniel's drawings reached the page (the full versions are in the edition).
• A short life of Lewis Carroll and a note on the period.

THE QUESTIONS:

80 discussion questions — three for every one of the twenty-four chapters (one to argue about, one to look closely at, one to share across ages) plus eight for the two books together — each meeting's set spoiler-fenced, so nothing gives away what comes after it.

THE GAME:

Spot the Plate — five of Tenniel's plates printed without captions, to identify (which book, which chapter, what moment), with a full answer key at the back.

Plus three ruled notes pages, spread through the packet.

The kit is licensed for book-club, family, and classroom use — print as many copies as your group needs.

It is the companion to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass — The Christmas Gift Edition (ebook and large-format gift hardcover), edited by Horace Harriott Jr.

Find the edition, this kit, and the rest of the Companion Classics series at payhip.com/horaceharriottjr.

The texts of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) are in the public domain, as are John Tenniel's illustrations (Carroll died in 1898; Tenniel in 1914).

This kit is new editorial matter, © 2026 Horace Harriott Jr. An independent Companion Classics publication.