Building a book like The Real Alice in Wonderland involves not only creativity and design skills, but an impressive array of technical knowledge in an evolving industry. It sounds simplistic to say that a designer designing a book needs to remember that she is, ahem, designing a book, but it’s true—and it’s vital that the designer know not just that a book is being designed, but what kind of a book. Books demand design considerations that more typical designer projects—brochures, flyers, billboards, folders, even annual reports—don’t typically pose. Moreover, they’re not the sorts of things that any one is born knowing. Take, for example, the question of the gutter. Every book has one. It’s the crevice in the center of the book where all the pages are bound together. In books like The Real Alice in Wonderland the binding method means that type and critical images must be positioned so that they end before the page disappears down into the gutter. The thicker the book, the deeper the...

The Real Alice in Wonderland is a large, coffee-table style book filled with interesting facts about Alice Liddell, the young girl who inspired the classic story, Alice in Wonderland , by Lewis Carroll. Not many people know the story was inspired by a real person, and that is one of the reasons Cathy Rubin and her daughter, Gabriella Rubin decided to create this book. Cathy recently agreed to an interview on the making of the book. "I’d like to thank you Maryann for giving me the opportunity to share our 'making of the book' story with you." Q. What prompted you to undertake a project like this? A. My daughter’s school selected Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for Book Day, and Gabriella begged me to collaborate with her and tell the kids the story behind the story. It would be three years before a one-hour classroom PowerPoint presentation evolved into a finished book. Q. What was it like working with your daughter? How did you break up writing tasks? A. There...