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.
Now I’m scared of a lot of things — including flying cockroaches, things that go bump in the night, and eerie shadows in the darkness. And I didn’t think I was scared of heights, but a couple of years back, when I joined my book club friends caving in Sagada, I practically bawled when we had to rappel down a three-storey cliffside with no harness! And yes, I do have this intense, irrational, and persistent fear that I’m going to run out of books!
But my real phobia is nosocomephobia: the fear of hospitals. My stomach lurches every time I enter a hospital, even when I’m just visiting. A whiff of the antiseptic smell is enough to make me gag, and I’m really uncomfortable staying for very long. Even when I got dengue fever last year, I wanted to bolt from the emergency room (if only I had the energy), because I didn’t want to get admitted (and I ended up staying the whole week!). I think this was brought about by all the time I spent in hospital waiting areas when my dad was going in and out of the hospital for cancer treatments when I was younger.
Anyway, here are some of the phobias featured in the book:
dentophobia: fear of dentists
aerophobia: fear of air travel
ophidiophobia: fear of snakes
mysophobia: fear of germs
glossophobia: fear of public speaking
Arachnophobia: fear of spiders
Coulrophobia: fear of clowns
I like that there’s a capsule definition of each phobia in a corner of each spread. I’m not sure how people with these particular fears will react to the pop-ups, but there’s something freaky about the illustrations and the way the pop-up mechanisms animate them that may probably induce some fear out of the most intrepid reader. The clown is particularly scary for me, especially when it’s moving! You can see a couple of the spreads in pop-up action at Gary Greenberg’s site.
This pop-up is more adult than any of the pop-ups I own, making it a bang-up addition to my collection. There are other titles in the series — The Pop-up Book of Nightmares and The Pop-up Book of Sex — that I’ll definitely hunt down for my shelves.
How about you, what’s your phobia?
***
The Pop-up Book of Phobias, 4/5 stars
Book #133 for 2010
[amazonify]::omakase::300:250[/amazonify]
cool book
Yup, it is cool! :)
I want this book!
I lucked out on BookMooch! :D
A friend of mine has this book, and it’s every bit as awesome as you say it is :)
:) Pop-up books are so much fun!
I’m afraid of heights, and flying cockroaches too (WHY OH WHY DO THEY HAVE TO FLYYYYY???) but I think my biggest fear are frogs. Ugh. Icky creatures.
And that is a very cool book. :)
I don’t like frogs either. I attended a 5-day conference at the Aquino Center in Tarlac one summer, and I couldn’t sleep because the frogs were making a racket all night, every night, a steady rumbling din that just kept on going! I was imagining exactly how many of them had to be hiding in the dark to create that noise.