Victorian Doll House

I didn’t have a dollhouse when I was a kid — the closest I got were haphazardly stacked boxes with cut-out doors and windows for my Barbies, with mismatched furniture made from odds and ends scavenged around the house. Eventually I got Polly Pocket playsets, which I loved too, but a dollhouse that can fit in the palm of your hand isn’t exactly a proper dollhouse.

Last year around the holidays, I scored this wonderful find from Andy, a friend who sells books online: A Three-Dimensional Victorian Dollhouse, which brings me one step closer to my dream dollhouse.

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The Pop-up Book of Phobias

I finally got my copy of The Pop-up Book of Phobias (created and written by Gary Greenberg, illustrated by Balvis Rubess, pop-ups by Matthew Reinhart) from BookMooch, just in time for Halloween. If you’ve tuned in since the last 24-Hour Readathon, you’ll know I’m on a scary book kick, so you’ll be seeing a lot of scary books here from here on out!

I first discovered this book in the library of our BookMooch fairy godmother Triccie (she’s opening a bookstore this week: Libreria at the Cubao Expo!), who has an enviable (yes, I drool everytime I’m over at her house) collection of pop-up books! I wanted my own copy  for my small — but growing! — pop-up collection, and just my luck, a copy came up on BookMooch a few months back!

This pop-up book showcases popular phobias, i.e. irrational, intense and persistent fears of certain situations, activities, things, animals, or people, in macabre 3D images. The cover photo at the very top of this post is the spread on acrophobia, or the fear of heights.

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Disney + Robert Sabuda

I got a new book for my growing pop-up collection — I just couldn’t resist a mashup of two guilty pleasures: Disney and Robert Sabuda (and you can see I couldn’t resist the Happy Meal either; that’s my talking Gingy figure guarding the book!).

It’s a pop-up alphabet book featuring stylized Disney characters and Robert Sabuda’s fabulous paper engineering.  But enough said — I will let the photos do the talking.

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The Little Prince Deluxe Pop-up

The Little Prince is one of the most meaningful books in my life and I never get tired of reading it. There is also a favorite memory attached to the book — forty four girls in blue and white uniforms, enthralled as one very special teacher read us the following lines:

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose — ” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

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About Alice

I just saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland today, and much like the Sherlock Holmes movie some months ago, it’s not part of the canon, although it does borrow much of Lewis Carroll’s  Alice is 19, doesn’t remember any of her “Wonderland” adventures, and falls down the rabbit hole again as she flees from a marriage proposal from the foppish Hamish. Alice must fulfill the prophecy in the oraculum and slay the Jabberwocky to save Underland from the evil Red Queen.

Like all Tim Burton Films, it’s a visual spectacle, and I credit him that. I liked the Cheshire Cat, the Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman!), and the Red Queen, not so much the jaded Alice, the depressing Mad Hatter (as much as I love Johnny Depp, I don’t like his Wonka and his Mad Hatter and they both seem like the same eerie caricatures on crack), or the  hammed up White Queen.  With this grown up version of Alice, I missed the heart and whimsicality of the original Alice, and I wouldn’t trade that for all the visual effects in the world.

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