Pop-up book

A pop-up book is any book with

Animated books

Animated books combine three elements: story, colored illustrations which include text, and "two or more animated illustrations with their movement mechanisms working between a doubled page".^[2] In 1938, Julian Wehr's animations for children's books were patented as "moving illustrations" that move the picture up and down and horizontally at the same time with a single movement.^[3][4][5]

Transformations

Transformations show a scene made up of vertical slats. When a reader pulls a tab on the side, the slats slide under and over one another to "transform" into a totally different scene. Ernest Nister, one of the early English children's book authors, often produced books solely of transformations. Many of these have been reproduced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^{[citation needed]}

Tunnel books

Tunnel books (also called peepshow books) consist of a set of pages bound with two folded concertina strips on each side and viewed through a hole in the cover. Openings in each page allow the viewer to see through the entire book to the back, and images on each page work together to create a dimensional scene inside. This type of book dates from the mid-18th century and was inspired by theatrical stage sets. Traditionally, these books were often created to commemorate special events or sold as souvenirs of tourist attractions. The term "tunnel book" derives from the fact that many of these books were made to commemorate the building of the tunnel under the

Recently the tunnel book format has been resurrected by book artist Carol Barton and others as a sculptural book form. Artists are interested not only in the book's interior views, but also in treating the side accordions and covers as informational and visual surfaces. A selection of tunnel books by Carol Barton is archived in the special collections of Virginia Commonwealth University's James Branch Cabell Library.

Volvelles

Volvelles are paper constructions with rotating parts. An early example is the Astronomicum Caesareum, by Petrus Apianus, which was made for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles in 1540. The book is full of nested circular pieces revolving on grommets.

Harlequinades and turn-up books

About 1765, English printer Robert Sayer began experimenting with a novelty format for the juvenile book market, an early forerunner to interactive movable books, according to book historian Peter Haining. The outcome was the creation of the "metamorphoses" format, "a thin book of four sections each with two flaps which folded over, and on each section an interchangeable picture. Beneath those pictures appeared some descriptive lines of verse, and as the reader turned up the flaps in the correct order in the text difference scenes were revealed".^[6]

Sayer created books featuring the "

By late 1770, Sayer had published four turn-up or metamorphosis books, which became a "craze with children".[7] Rival booksellers, such as Thomas Hughes and George Martin soon copied the "turn-up" format.^[7] In the United States, Joseph Rakestraw published "Metamorphosis; or, a Transformation of Pictures, with Poetical Explanations, for the Amusement of Young Persons", by Benjamin Sands.

History

The audience for early movable books were adults, not children.

While it can be documented that books with movable parts had been used for centuries, they were almost always used in scholarly works. In 1775 Thomas Malton, the elder published A Compleat Treatise on Perspective in Theory and Practice, on the Principles of Dr. Brook Taylor. A Compleat Treatise on Perspective is the earliest known commercially produced pop-up book since it contains three-dimensional paper mechanisms. The pop-ups are activated by pulling string and form geometric shapes used to aid the reader in understanding the concept of perspective.

It was not until the very late 18th century that these techniques were applied to books designed for entertainment, particularly for children.^[10]

Some of the first three-dimensional and tab activated books were produced by Ernest Nister and Lothar Meggendorfer. These books were popular in Germany and Britain during the 19th century.

The great leap forward in the field of pop-up books came in 1929 with the publication of the Daily Express Children's Annual Number 1 "with pictures that spring up in model form". This was produced by Louis Giraud and Theodore Brown. Four more Daily Express Annuals followed and then Giraud set up his own publishing house, Strand Publications, this produced the groundbreaking series of Bookano books. The Bookano books are considered the first, true pop-up books for children because the pop-ups can be viewed from a full 360 degrees, not just the front side facing the viewer. There were seventeen Bookanos before the series came to an end with the death of Giraud in 1949.

In the United States, in the 1930s, Harold Lentz followed Giraud's lead with the production of the Blue Ribbon books in New York. He was the first publisher to use the term "pop-up" to describe their movable illustrations.^[11][12]

The next advance in the field was made by the astoundingly prolific

David A. Carter, who created many bug themed pop-ups, and Robert Sabuda are other prominent pop-up book authors. Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy, by Matthew Reinhart. This book received literary attention for its elaborate pop-ups, and the skill of its imagery, with The New York Times saying that "calling this sophisticated piece of engineering a 'pop-up book' is like calling the Great Wall of China a partition".^[15]

Collections

Library collections

• Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.^[16]
• Bowdoin College, the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives in Brunswick, Maine holds the Harold M. Goralnick Pop-up Book Collection, which contains 1,900 volumes.^[17]
• The North Carolina State University Libraries Research and Study Collection of Pop-Up Books 1960–2009 contains 7.5 linear feet of pop-up books, catalogs, newspaper clippings and other related ephemera pop-up book materials, many donated by Sara Frooman.^[18]
• The University of Iowa Special Collections Library in Iowa City includes the Matthew Reinhart Pop-up Book Collection^[19] and the Emily Martin Collection,^[20] two noted paper engineers.
• The University of New Hampshire Dimond Library in Durham, New Hampshire holds the Carel Chapman Movable Book Collection, which contains over 1,800 pop-up and movable books.^[21]
• Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries Special Collections and Archives holds the Betty Tisinger Collection and many other examples of pop-up and movable books.

Museum collections

• Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has over 1,700 titles in its Pop-Up Book Collection.^[22]
• Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania includes 643 books from illustrator Maurice Sendak's bequeath of his Lothar Meggendorfer collection of movable books.^[23]

Associations

Since 1993, the Movable Book Society has provided a forum for artists, book sellers, book producers, collectors, curators, and others to share enthusiasm and exchange information about pop-up and movable books. The organization also awards industry prizes for best paper engineer (trade and artists’ book) and excellence in paper engineering by an undergraduate or graduate student.^[24][25]

In popular culture

• The central plot of the film Paddington 2 (2017) revolves around trying to retrieve 'Mrs. Kozlovas Pop-Up Book', a pop-up book containing clues that lead to a treasure.

See also

References

Further reading

• The Elements of Pop Ups by James Diaz and David A. Carter, 1999.
  ISBN 0689822243
• Hinshaw, Craig (November 1999). "Looking into Tunnel Books". Arts & Activities. 126 (3): 34–35.
  OCLC 425444586
  .
• Pop-Up! A Manual of Paper Mechanisms by Duncan Birmingham, 1997.
  ISBN 1899618090
• The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume 1, Basic Forms by Carol Barton, 2005.
  ISBN 0962775207
• The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume 2, Platforms and Props by Carol Barton, 2008.
  ISBN 0962775223
• The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume 3, V-Folds by Carol Barton, 2012.
  ISBN 0962775231
• Reynolds, Janet M. (2013). Exploring Artistic Learning Through the Creation of Tunnel Books. Boston University College of Fine Arts.
  hdl:2144/4523
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pop-up books.

• Pop-Up and Movable Books, A Tour through Their History, The University of North Texas
• The Movable Book Society
• Pop Goes the Page: Movable and Mechanical Books from the Brenda Forman Collection, The University of Virginia Library
• Toy and Movable (T&M) Books — instruction on use of this
  Library of Congress Subject Heading
  for current acquisitions