I don't remember having any pop-up books when I was little, which might explain why I'm love them so much now. As one friend said, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. I wish I had had Robert Sabuda's pop up Alice in Wonderland when I was a kid. I saw a copy of it in Spanish in Barcelona and nearly came home with it. In the end, it wasn't the language that stopped me (I know the story already, after all); I regretfully decided it was too bulky for the luggage. Sabuda's books are definitely kids' books but there are others making engineered books that are so much more than pop-ups.
I like the fact that Carol Barton calls her books Kinetic Books. (Via BookGirl.) Engineered books sounds so hard to do (math is hard, isn't it? [eye-roll]), and "pop-up" isn't always accurate. Barton is the maker of one of my all-time favorite kinetic books, Five Luminous Towers, A Book to be Read in the Dark, which I first saw as part of the National Museum of Women in the Arts The Book as Art exhibit catalog. I love that it lights up, too, and the architectural plans and decoration around it. Carol also has a new blog, The Popular Edge, Pop-Up and Book Art News.
And there's this video by ShitDisco that's been making its way around book and music circles. It's really f-ing clever, both as a book and a music vid.
(Via TJ Bookarts.)
Finally (at least for this post), there's the Stephen King pop up (the stuff of nightmares) done by Alan Dingman illustrator, and Kees Moerbeek, book engineer, who doesn't seem to have a website. (Via The International Journal of the Book).
Five Luminous Towers really is terrific, isn't it? Carol had one of the books in the edition with her when I took her class at Arrowmont a few weeks ago, and she showed us the mechanism and how she tucked it away. She told us about all the research she did to find just the right types of batteries to meet her needs.
When she did her instructor presentation (each instructor makes a brief presentation to all of the students on one evening during the week), she closed by turning off the lights and walking to the front of the room with one of the Five Luminous Towers in the open position. It was very cool.
She's also benefitted (and we, as her students, in turn, benefitted) from living near research institutions such as the Library of Congress, where she's done a good amount of book arts research. So we saw many interesting slides on early forms of "movable books." Usually, they were used to illustrate scientific or anatomical principles. You can tell that I really loved her class.
Posted by: BookGirl | August 24, 2007 at 07:54 PM
Ooooh! Lucky you! Wish I could have taken a class with her. Sounds like it was fab!
Posted by: Lee Kottner | August 24, 2007 at 08:54 PM