New Pop-ups!

I love pop-up books! I think it’s just amazing how paper engineers are finding more and more ways to make pop-up books more complex, and I enjoy the jaw-dropping awe evoked by an ingeniously designed pop-up, and well, these books make me feel like a kid again!

I am slowly building up my collection of pop-up books, and so far this year, I’ve added three new books to my collection: Popigami by James and Francesca Diaz, Elements of Pop-up by David Carter and James Diaz, and Dragons and Monsters by Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda.

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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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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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The Air Up There (Picture Book Roundup #13)


Some of my favorite book have themes of flight — The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois; Tuesday by David Wiesner; and Peter Pan.  Maybe it’s because my zodiac’s an air sign, or maybe i just like the carefree, leisurely feeling that flying themes generate.

This month’s picture book roundup covers books dealing with flight, clouds, and other above-ground subject matter: The Flying Locomotive by William Pene du Bois; The Little Cloud by Eric Carle; Night of the Gargoyles by Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Wiesner; Sadako by Eleanor Coerr, illustrated by Ed Young; and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz commemorative pop-up by L. Frank Baum, engineered by Robert Sabuda.

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