Closing out this year in a big way with the pop-up book seen in Wicked, David Hawcock shares with us some behind-the-scenes insights, but also introduces his new and soon-to-be-obsession for us MBS members: POPUPGAMES. Especially looking at you, Rob Kelly!
Maaike van der Meulen once again expertly reports from Paris with the 2024 Salon du Livre Animé.
A mystery solved: TWO versions of the same DC Ultimate Superheroes? Holy Double Take, Batman!
Rosie and David Temperley share a newly rediscovered treasure. And of course, your newest list of collectible pop-up books is revealed, along with The PopUpLady's news from the world of movables.
Bruce Foster, Editor-in-Chief, MS
There's No Book Like Oz?
Advertisements for Wicked (Part One) were popping up everywhere long before it was in theaters, so it's fitting that an Oz-themed book by our featured paper engineer, David Hawcock, made it on screen! And the commercial edition is already out of stock... Just how many pop-up Dorothys and Scarecrows have there been so far?
Robert Sabuda published a commemorative Wizard of Oz in 2000 for the centennial of L. Frank Baum's beloved original, but there have been more than a dozen (dozens?) published over the years in different levels of complexity.
The earliest interactive take on the tome may be the Wizard of Oz Waddle Book from 1934 (see back cover), which included die-cut figures of Toto, the Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin man, the Wizard, and Dorothy. Once you punched them out and assembled them by following the instructions, they were supposed to parade (ok, waddle) down the provided yellow-brick ramp on their own steam. Most 1934 copies no longer include the original parts, and the Newberry Library copy is no exception... Happily, we were recently able to acquire a 1993 facsimile with its own die-cut recreation of the movable parts. Somewhere between paper dolls and pop-ups, this innovation was clearly too popular to survive intact!
In this issue we'll also look at some real-live magic from the paper engineers at the Paris Salon du Livre Animé, with a robust range of French popup books that are available to audiences all around the world, and of course, Ellen Rubin's Poppits. Curiously, our previously featured artist, Kees Moerbeek, engineered a 2009 Wicked pop-up book as well. Avid pop-up book collectors David and Rosie Temperley share how they came across Rumpelstiltskin deLuxe and Sleeping Beauty, a pair of hand-assembled Kees originals that they had been shielding from fading for decades, and encountered again recently as if new!
Finally, save the date for our next Zoom Show and Tell on Saturday, February 22 (Noon CT; Chicago time)!
Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Director P. S. Please email me with comments, questions, and suggestions. info@movablebooksociety.org
All rights reserved. No content from this publication may be reproduced or shared without the expressly written permission of the editor or the board of The Movable Book Society.
Art Direction and Design by Bruce Foster.
Send questions, articles, or suggestions to editor@movablebooksociety.org
This spread: The ancient Greek game, Pente Grammai by David Hawcock's PopUpGames. Illustrations by Mark Ruffle. Upper Left: The Wicked Witch spread that will be seen in Wicked Part Two next year. Cover: Pop-ups for Wicked were illustrated by Ant Noble.
david Hawcock
ith the opening of the smash hit movie, Wicked (Part One), once again the name David Hawcock has materialized with smoking-hot sizzle. David engineered the pop-up book seen in the movie and now that book has been replicated by Insight Editions for our own personal collections. Two pop-ups appear in this film and the third, featuring the Witch, (seen right) will burst onscreen next year with Part Two. More on this in a bit.
In even bigger news, David is introducing his new venture, POPUPGAMES, previously pitched in 2023 on Dragons' Den (the BBC's version of Shark Tank). While all
Traditional Chess illustrated by David Hawcock.
Row of Four
four dragons made offers, David settled on a partnership with both Peter Jones and Touker Suleyman to join his new entity creating the exciting line of paper pop-up games.
In David's words, "This all started life when I wanted to explore using Kickstarter to get projects going. At first I naively thought I could just make part of a book and then complete it if the funding process was successful. But it soon became apparent that to shoot all the video and make content needed for a successful pitch I had to have a finished product. So I went though all the ideas I’ve had salted away for something I could complete relatively quickly and simply, and settled on the pop-up chess set. This was all finalised and looking good. The pitch was live when the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) contacted me and asked if I'd like to drop Kickstarter and present the idea on their popular business show Dragons’ Den. Obviously this was a bit of a scary proposition but I thought I'd regret not following it through. So, I did that and got four offers for Pop-Up Games Ltd - a new company set up as a vehicle for investment should offers be forthcoming. Prior to the show I had to take the project right through to printed copies (I did a micro run of 150cps) to have ready for the pitch so there was a level of risk involved.
Between filming the show and it being broadcast I made a proper print run of the chess set and Row Of Four (editor's note: known here in the US as Connect 4). The broadcast night was wildly exciting as we sold thousands of games. We had to bomb proof the website to cope with visitor numbers. The website designer I work with phoned during the broadcast and said 'the servers are smoking but its holding up!’ The pitch can be seen on my website. I still haven't seen ittoo traumatic!"
With the clever basic construction of the grid that allows for pieces to be easily pulled in and out, all while also allowing the board to be folded flat with the pieces in whatever positions they were when the game is paused, a number of games were possible. These include several versions of chess: traditional, Wizards Chess from Harry Potter (once again produced by Insight Editions), with talks underway for Star Wars and Isle of Lewis versions. This then led to a variation on the structure and games like Go, I Remember!, Solitaire (Game of Pegs found on the tables at Cracker Barrel), Draughts (known in US as Checkers), historical games like Senet (from Egypt), Hnefatafl (the Viking Game), Latrunculi (from ancient Rome), and Pente Grammai (from ancient Greece). These
last four David is proud to say are in the collection of the British Museum. And all of these are joined by his very popular Row of Four.
David also has a new format - Twist Nightlights - also published under the POPUPGAMES brand even though it is not a game. There are already 4 versions in development.
Regarding Wicked - "I had a call from Dan Burke in the production team about making a pop-up book. Possibly my involvement with Paddington put me in the frame although it seemed to be news to the design people that I made that one.
There was a meeting at the studio. The idea was to have a story of Oz book written by the Wizard. At that time it was far from certain if the book would be a pop-up or a picture book. I was passed some visuals to play with. So I started work on the balloon mountain spread adapting the visuals into 3D and shooting video (I have a reasonable video set up at my studio. This is invaluable in working with clients both in
The Viking Game: Hnefatafl. Illustrated by Nick Watton.
Booklight below illustrated by Elisa Bellotti
film + TV as well as book publishers). Working with Dan we came up with a pop that was working as hoped. I had another meeting at the studio and this time director Jon Chu was there. I think it was after that that the book became officially a pop-up.
The brief was to make two versions of the book - one with 2 pops (mountains with balloon and Emerald city), another with an extra third spread (the witch).
So then it was a case of designing / making samples / shooting video / adapting samples after director feedback. There were a number of variations to each pop. The Emerald city went through three main versions with variations to each. Basically the idea was to have big and dramatic popssomething that would look good on screen. Originally some of the designs had various pull tabs, wheels etc. but a decision was taken not to
All games available at: www.hawcockbooks.co.uk or www.popupchess.com
have actors interacting with the book. It all had to happen on opening.
I worked with a studio based illustrator on the art (Ant Noble). Not surprisingly he had never illustrated a pop-up book before but he learned very quickly as we went through all the variations. He also illustrated the flat pages in the book. The production team wanted 20+ copies of the book so we made everything in a way we could digitally print and cut (vector cut lines, etc.), basically preparing the book for mass production. Sometimes, if up to 10 books are needed, the books are all hand cut and assembled in my Bath studio but anything above that is really too time consuming.
But things change. The summer the film was shot was not so great weather wise so the shooting schedule changed repeatedly and we ended up making 10 copies super quickly cut and assembled by hand! Scenes with the book were shot inside on a sound stage so on bad weather days the team wanted to have things ready for inside filming. All the production file prep was not wasted though as it was a relatively simple process to make the files ready for the replica edition. The first 2 spreads are seen in Wicked part 1. We will all have to wait for part 2
to see the witch pop on screen. All 3 spreads do appear in the replica book published by IE.
One other aspect of the job was to create a giant version of the book. This was to be seen as a point-of-sale display in the Emerald city bookstore. It was pretty big and sat on a mechanical book built by the VFX folks. This opened and closed the book slowly and continuously. I was a bit stressed about this one as scaling pops up can lead to all sorts of unpredictable issues. In this case after scaling up the card thickness and reinforcing various pieces, it all seemed to work well.
It was a wonderful opportunity to work on the project. It was great working with a very creative team and then having the chance to spend a lot of time on set (particularly with the giant book - seeing Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo perform right in front of me was quite a thing).
So, that's Wicked."
Wicked, the Replica Pop-Up Book, is available at Amazon.com. Learn more about David Hawcock in MS issue Vol. 27 No. 1
The game, Senet, from Ancient Egypt. Illustrated by Javier Joaquin.
Ingeniously, the game folds flat without disturbing the current positions of pieces!
15th Salon du livre Anime 2024 Paris ,,
15th Salon du livre Anime 2024 Paris
short, but intense, as you can say. A fair like this is unique in Europe, and I have not heard of a similar annual event. A niche in the bookish realm. Next September in Cluny (France) will be just as interesting, and I expect a 16th Salon in Paris again too.
We missed some loyal paper engineers, for example Bernard Duisit and creative couple Dominique Ehrhard & AnneFlorence Lemasson, who had a family gathering to attend. But the Salon feels like a family gathering too, mostly meeting online or e-mailing, a real life connection is pure joy. I spy spotted paper engineers Eric Singelin, and also Mike Malkovas plus Anno Zhou (from L’Agence Pop-up) among the crowd, along with aspiring paper engineers and teachers. Together with collectors of name (bonjour Graziella Albanèse!) and parents with kids, it was again a buzzing fair.
Olivier Charbonnel showed us a wide range of white dummies of his paper engineering, done over the last 25 years. He started at White Heat USA in 1997-‘98. The display was a huge insight and treasure trove of techniques. We could directly compare his most recent book with the white mockups, already filled with scribbles for the illustrator Annabelle Buxton. A nice interview with Charbonnel about his long career, by Jean-Marc Desrosiers can be found here.
To the right: Sauve qui peut! (Save Yourself!)
Olivier Charbonnel's white dummy and printed book featuring 6 double pages with pop-ups and movables. A scary story about a rabbit who wanted to get some parsley, but encounters scary zombie rabbits and more! Beware!
Maaike van der Meulen
GOING AROUND THE ROOMS
Arno Celerier, illustrator and pop-up artist, must have been hiding! I totally missed him for the article about the French School (MS 30-2) but you might know him from the pop-up DIY A Tiger in my Garden (2014 Prestel, or the French edition from Les Apprentis Rêveurs 2012, signed Arno). His attractive artist’s books (PAN! And a leporello with adorable Yeti’s) and unique pop-up items made me smile. He also published En allant chez papi (on the way to grandpa’s). Nine double pages and seven pop-up pages, including flaps, take you along with a girl who runs off to Grandpa’s house, encountering strange situations like a salad-eating lion and
Arno Celerier
Nicolas Codron with his Worldmaps, a pop-up journey. 15 handcut/crafted hardcover copies in all, 17 pop-up spreads + several leporello & pop-up pages and subpages. For more information about obtaining a copy for yourself, email Nicolas at his studio.
card-playing caterpillars in very colorful whimsical landscapes.
Nicolas Codron organizer of the Salon) created several cards around tv/games, but the piece de resistance was a new artist book: Worldmaps, a pop-up journey. Edition of 15, handcrafted on demand. An exquisite selection of old world maps (from old atlases) turned into movable maps in various and surprising ways. It was years in the making.
Dominique Lagraula, technical instructor and book artist, attended the Salon for the first time. She made her third minimalistic little pop-up book called Boucle d’or et les trois ours (Goldilocks and the three bears) with six simple yet effective pop-ups. Her first book, Le chaperon rouge, was developed into a theater play and creative workshops for children (MS 32,3).
Marion Bataille made a gem again with the sporty character: JIM (MS 32,3) but also designed M+ pops up for the Museum and More in Hong Kong this year (MS 32.2). I, and others with me who ordered this book, asked for an autograph of course! Worth mentioning is a continuing story around Utopop (collaboration with Fanny Millard); POPOTU is a cloth pop-up, including a hanging
mobile in paper for young children, in a small edition of 30 by publisher EXTRA. On the website are different options to explore.
Gérard Lo Monaco exhibited his Surrealism for the exquisite exhibition on Surrealism at the Centre Pompidou. In a cardboard slipcase, hardcover, eight pop-ups of famous surrealist works, interpreted and painted by Lo Monaco. Accordion binding can be elongated for show.
Elena Selena was a busy bee this year. She also illustrated several children’s books with added elements. Her own newest pop-up book is called Loups. Wolves are a beloved theme throughout
Gérard Lo Monaco with a suitcase worth of masterpieces.
Anne-Sophie Baumann with her Le grand livre animé du corps humain (book of the human body) Ill. Vanessa Robidou. Series: Anim’Action. With flaps, pull tabs and a pop-up brain on nine double pages.
Mathilde Bourgon, paper engineer of Mondes Merveilleux (Wonderful Worlds).
Jean-Marc Desroisirs: Qui a la gueule rouge et Qui a la gueule effrayante
Artist’s book (‘Who has the red face and who has the scary face’)
Wood engraving, shaped soft cover, four pop-up pages, 20x15 cm. 45 euro, Contact: jeanmarc.desroisiers@sfr.fr
Camille Magaud brought again the very attractive Tire d’aile, and other artist’s books from last year, because she had a baby!
Freshly graduated Benjamin Caillé and Lilian Sananikone came to demonstrate Unfolded Stories; a prototype leporello book that uses Augmented Reality to engage the player (with smartphone) to distribute water in an imaginary city in the middle of the desert.
NOTE: new books by Philippe UG and by Dominique Ehrhard & Anne-Florance Lemasson, both authors at Les Grandes Personnes, are already featured in MS 32 nr 1 and MS 32 nr 3, or can be viewed at https://www.editionsdesgrandespersonnes.com/par-categories/
Special this year was the participation of two USA heavyweights: Rosston Meyer with a wide selection of editions by Poposition Press and Marianne R. Petit The opportunity to purchase their books without high shipping costs was very much appreciated by the European fans. And even more important: being able to sniff, caress and open the books first and decide on the spot whether to buy or not. Marianne brought her famous titles, like The pop-up Struwwelpeter, My Anatomic Journey, and slightly dark 21st Century Nursery Rhymes, together with some other handcrafted works.
Paul de Graaf, alias PaperPaul/JeanPaul Leconte joined the table of Rosston for a while, He showed some of his intriguing paper engineering works and experiments, LIVE instead of on youtube.
Peter Dahmen Papierdesign joined forces with Poposition Press on Pop Up Sculptures (Kickstarter funded in 2024) and we had the first opportunity to hold and inspect both books: the regular edition and the Special Edition with acrylic slipcase, plus all four cards, and they are looking perfect! Of course we overheard the stories about this journey, because of course nothing in production is perfect the first time. Peter had a wide range of MoMA cards for sale, which are expensive to get to Europe, including two new holiday designs for 2024.
Jean-Charles Trebbi, surrounded by internationals, opened a very cool large pop-up structure that turned into a marble run going round and around. Very architectural, Escher-like, made of a light beige paper, and a one-of-a-kind experiment made some time ago. His artist books are a delight.
Maike Biederstädt also was selling cards she designed for MoMA, along with the French titles of the children’s books she engineers
Upper Left: Rosston Meyer and Paul de Graaf
Left: Peter Dahmen and Olivier Charbonnel with Peter's Pop-up Sculptures
Left: Marianne R. Petit
Below: Jean-Charles Trebbi
for publisher Dorling Kindersley, the Pop-up Peekaboo! series, which is called Mes Premiers Pop-Up series in French. Of course The Weather and What’s in the Egg? are still bestsellers for Maike, and she wishes more time to design her own, next pop-up book… We will wait patiently!
Rianne van Duin had a very special offer: a French edition of playbook, Your Adventure, now Ton Adventure which sold very well and fast. A clever solution of stickers with translated text made it popular among the kids. Displayed was a dummy of a book for Museum Boerhaave (NL). The museum asked for a huge book (approximately 3 feet high) to educate children about their collection, the act of collecting, and classifying treasures in a museum.
Plus another cardboard flap book in Dutch, Een huis voor Harry (illustrations by Leo Timmers} that showed Rianne's versatile skills of paper engineering.
Maaike van der Meulen displayed a large accordion style book called Bau-Beest, in which she gathered the whole family of abstract figures she has created over several years. Measuring 5 meters when totally unfolded, but 40x25 cm closed. It attracted quite some attention of collectors, who have to wait patiently for an edition of three to five books to be crafted. Fresh off the letterpress was a new booklet, with two pop-ups called Dear Artist. At the end, participants got a treat from Patrick Lecoq, who attended the table
of livresanimes.com established by Thierry Desnoues, (yes!! get the audience hooked on popup books please) on a little showing of Chinese pop-ups, especially Qibaishi with lush aquarel (watercolor) paintings.
And as noted in the last issue of MS, the English film about the history of movable books with excellent imagery, made by Lecoq (MS 32.2) is now also available on Youtube! A lovely dinner for participants ended the evening well, and I hope visitors went home with lifted spirits and signed treasures.
Upper left: Rianne van Duin and Maike Biederstädt Lower left: Maaike van der Meulen
Even in Pop-up Books, a Multiverse Can Rise to Challenge our Perceptions of Reality.
By Bruce Foster and Matthew Reinhart
Recently I received an inquiry from Patrick Lecoq in Paris, movable book collector extraordinaire, expressing some confusion regarding a new title from Matthew Reinhart. Was this the same book from 2010 but with a new cover?
I am, of course, speaking of DC Superheroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book. A casual comparison of the two was indeed puzzling! It was the same, but it wasn't! The major spreads were basically the same; the major engineering was similar; the text was even often the same. But there were differences: The illustrators were different. Not all the text survives in both. And the engineering, especially in many of the smaller pops, had changed. What the heck is going ON here?
So I went straight to the source, Matthew himself. Perhaps he could clear up this multiversal conundrum...
Matthew answered right away. In his own words. "My original DC Super Heroes : The Ultimate Pop-Up Book was released in 2010 with the publisher Little Brown. I created the paper engineering and wrote the text, while collaborating with different comic book artists at the time to create that one, namely Bernard Chang (pencils), Scott McDaniel (pencils), Aaron Lopresti (pencils), Freddie E. WIlliams II (pencils/inker), Andy Smith (pencils), Andy Owens (inker) and Steve Buccellato (colorist).
The original Little Brown title had 6 total spreads, each spread featuring one large central pop-up character/characters or scene with at least 3-5 smaller minipops in flaps on the outer sides of each spread. There was an electronic feature: a light-up bat signal over the spread featuring Gotham City and Batman, acetate pieces for Wonder Woman's invisible jet, and gold string to emulate Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth. Back then, we had the budget for special effects like electronics and different materials aside from cardstocksomething we don't always have now. Funny fact, the last spread's huge super hero battle royal pop, which incidentally is my favorite pop in the book, was a last minute addition and probably my favorite paper engineering for the whole title. The book ended up being enormous - often too thick to fit on regular shelves! After being a HUGE comic book fan my whole life, especially
Little, Brown's 2010 edition.
Abram's new 2024 edition.
overfilled the previous 2010 version book - too many pops made the book feel (to me) overly designed and awkward. I actually prefer this new streamlined version of the book, now featuring brand new colorful artwork from new collaborators, Brad Walker (pencils/inker), Marco Santucci (pencils/inker), Tom Derenick (pencils/ inker), Paul Mounts (colors) and Dan Mora (cover art). Rarely does a book artist like me get to revisit making a book like this, so I took my time enjoying the process along the way. Not only is it a refresh of the old book, but a reimagining with all new art and some new paper engineering mixed in with the original pop-up designs. I'm incredibly proud to reintroduce this book to a whole new
DC Comics, the original project was a dream come true for me and the book actually debuted on the NY Times best seller list for a week. As with most novelty titles like this, the original pop-up book title sold for a good number of years before it was no longer in print.
Years later, I was approached by my incredible colleague Andrew Smith, who is now the publisher at Abrams Books, to remake the DC Comics pop to go along with my other new popup comic compendium, Marvel Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up. He'd been at Little Brown when I created the first version of the DC Comics Super Heroes pop and wanted Abrams to publish both
books for present day superhero fans. I jumped at the chance to re-imagine one of my favorite titles to create!
I redesigned and refined each main spread pop, eliminating and consolidating characters that were not featured as prominently in the previous book. The DC villains pop is a completely new design, as well as the spread featuring Aquaman, Green Lantern and the Flash. We had to consider costing a lot more than we did back in 2009/2010, so we eliminated the special effects and electronics. I had always thought I
group of readers and fans."
So there we have it.
"Perfectly not confusing," as Antman said in Avengers Endgame. But what am I saying?! Wouldn't that be from yet another comic book universe??? Oy vey.
But I am certain my collection needs BOTH versions....You know, because definitive proof of a multiverse. ;)
Even Batman himself pops up almost identically (sans the lighted bat signal). The original Batman spread included pop-ups of Robin and Batgirl (above). In the new version, they are now non-popping, differently-colored base art, and the mini-pop is something else entirely.
The artwork is different, but Superman pops up using very very similar engineering. But the small pops are completely changed ...
SAUVE QUI PEUT!
PE: Olivier Charbonnel
Editions de la Martiniere Fall, 2024
979-104011887-9
23 Euro French
SUPER POP-UP MER
PE: David Hawcock Nuinui Jeunesse
October 10, 2024
978-2889574001 14,50 Euro French
LET'S HELP SANTA!
PE: Dana Florini
September 19, 2024 Lake Press
978-0655221098
$8.99
RECENT AND UPCOMING POP-UP BOOKS
LOUPS (WOLVES)
PE: Elena Selena
October 3, 2024
Gallimard Jeune
978-2075195386
$29.00
French
EN ALLANT CHEZ PAPI
PE: Arno Celérier
October 3, 2024
Seull Jeunesse
979-1023518986
19,99 Euro
French
978-0008595227
October 16, 2024
978-2017274421
DISNEY'S MONDES MERVEILLEUX
PE: Mathilde Bourgon Hachette Jeunesse
PEAU D'ÂNE
PE: Clémentine Soudais
Seuil Jeunesse
October 24, 2024
978-1023517187
21,90 Euro
French
PIRATES
LE PETIT
CHAPERON ROUGE
PE: Dominique Lagraula
Editions de la Martiniere
October 31, 2024
9791040118770
24,9 Euro French
POP-UP PEEKABOO! ELMO LOVES YOU!
PE: Maike Biederstädt
November 5, 2024
DK
978-0593962114
$14.99
LE ROITELET HUPPÉ
PE: Cécile Jacoud
Anterra
November 8, 2024
978-2368563588
15,07 Euro French
LA SOURIS DES MOISSONS
PE: Cécile Jacoud
Anterra
November 8, 2024
978-2368563571
15,07 Euro French
ROULE GALETTE
PE: Elena Selena Pere Castor
November 11, 2024
978-208045973
29,90 Euro French
MON LIVRE ANIME DU CORPS HUMAIN
PE: Anne-Sophie Baumann
Tourbillon
November 20, 2024 979-1027611218 21,71 Euro French
POP-UP PEEKABOO: MOANA
PE: Jo Garden
DK Children
December 10, 2024 978-0593962244
$14.99
POP-UP PEEKABOO! BUNNY
PE: Maike Biederstädt DK January 6, 2025
978-0593959169
$14.99
THE MOOMINS FIND A HOME
PE: Elena Selena
Macmillan UK
February 6, 2025
9781035038404
24,02 Euro English
IN THE EASTER EGG WORKSHOP
PE: Joel Stern Little Simon
February 10, 2025
9781665966580
$12.99
A Hdden Tresure Unerthed
Quite by happenstance apparently. David Temperley tells how his wife, Rosie, came across a long-forgotten treasure: two handmade originals from Kees Moerbeek, Rumplestiltskin deLuxe and Sleeping Beauty. The tome had been hidden in the bottom of a drawer in her bedroom for over twenty years!
Quite literally, they had followed Kees' instructions: "Although I used lightproof ink for this book I must advise to keep the book away from direct sunlight. especially the intense red I've used might lose its intensity when it's exposed to bright sunlight for over a long period of time. Also: keep water away from this book: the ink is not waterproof." The downside of these precautions, however, is that the book can unfortunately be hidden TOO well. The two single-pop books came housed in a case measuring over 14" x 20". Then each book was contained inside its own sarcophagus, with the story written inside on the base of each container.
But we are delighted that David shared this find with us and are allowing it to see the light of day at last.
POPPITS POPPITS
by Ellen G. K. Rubin
MBS CONFERENCE
Never seen St. Louis’ iconic Gateway Arch, the world’s tallest and a National Historic Landmark? Now’s your chance. Sign up for the Movable Book Society’s next conference, September 25-28, 2025 in St. Louis, MO. We’ll be at the Drury Plaza Hotel at the Arch. Check at https://movablebooksociety.org/ conference/ for more information as it becomes available. Be there! Or be square!
VIRTUAL BOOK FAIRS
More and more organizations are offering virtual book fairs. I have found them safe, easy, and rewarding. Check Getman’s to see which fairs he is sponsoring. https://getmansvirtual.com
EXHIBITIONS
Kubašta’s Fairytale Christmas exhibition, presented by his grandson, is on now display until January 14, 2025, at the Mánes Exhibition Hall in Prague, Czech Republic. https://bit.ly/4iuouhc
MBS members: If you are planning an exhibition or know of one, please alert The Popuplady or Bruce Foster. We all want to see these exhibitions. Think about approaching your local library or museum about mounting an exhibit from your popup book collection.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Larry’s contribution to the Miniature Book Society’s presentation is with Peter Thomas [who arrived at our Salt Lake City, Utah conference in a Conestoga wagon], Patrice Miller and Donna & Corky Lavalee, all focused on miniatures. His objects are unique and a tease for what he brings to our conferences. Check it out.
Over the summer, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) commissioned pop-ups from Rosston Meyer and Bruce Foster to be featured in a short fund-raising film just released late December. View the film here and see some behind-the-scenes on Instagram @bfpop.
The University of Toronto library has a very informative website illustrating an exhibition from 2023. It shows case-by-case what was on display and then describes the movable and optical toys. Worth a look.
There is also an audio guide for each case of the installation. https:// bit.ly/4gxzbOx
Over-sized pop-ups are demonstrated in Discovered reunions by Xantha Ramo shown here [in Spanish], a collapsible encyclopedia of Mexico City’s streetlife at the Fundación Casa Wabi. Photos and more here.
The Journal of Interactive Books in Italy has issued a CALL for PAPERS for the next issue of the Journal JIB - scheduled for April 2025.
WORKSHOPS
Conservation Enclosures with Maria G. Pisano at the Center for Book Arts, NYC, January 24, 2025 11am-5pm. Several ways to protect your precious movables. Limited class size. Due to human verify blocks on their website, one MAY have to type in: https://centerforbookarts.org/classes/inperson/25sbm000i
Also with Maria Pisano at the Center for Book Arts, make a Valentine’s Day Flexagon. Such fun and something to be saved and appreciated. February 13, 1-4PM. Also may have to type in: https://centerforbookarts.org/classes/ online/25spe002v
Shawn Sheehy will give a class at the Center for Book arts on Movable Metamorphs. March 8, 11am-5pm.
Type in: https://centerforbookarts.org/ classes/in-person/25spe200i
HOW-TO
An extremely inclusive website comes from the Santa Rosa Junior College, CA The Pop-Up Book Project is an exercise in aesthetics, sculptural thinking, mechanical engineering, and storytelling. Take the time to explore it.
View a recording of The Popup Lady, aka Ellen G.K. Rubin, as she was honored last month at the Center for Book Arts.
More than 700 pop-up books are available in Japanese at https://www. meggendorfer.jp. This includes the flip book of a worm eating through the pages as shown by Larry Seidman in his Miniature Book Society talk.
The Journal welcomes scientific contributions that concern both interactive books of historical and contemporary interest (material or virtual), the description/cataloguing, restoration and valorization of these assets. In addition to scientific contributions, a specific section will welcome reports of conferences, exhibitions, lectures and book reviews.
To submit an article or a review and read the guidelines: https://jib.pop-app.org/index.php/jib/ about/submissions#authorGuidelines
The deadline for submitting the contribution is January 31, 2025.
The company Gaylord-Archival, which sells materials to protect, store, and help create books and other collectibles, also presents how-to workshops. Here is one The Popuplady followed to create a wrapper for antiquarian and fragile books. Go to Gaylord.com to see other presentations.
A group called Print Exchanges, is a new network for scholars of pre-1800 print culture. https://printexchanges.wordpress.com Scholars and researchers will connect twice a year online to promote international collaborations. If you are working on a printrelated research project contact coordinator, Georgina Wilson
VOLUME 32, NUMBER 4
Left: Scanned from the collection in the Newberry Library, The Wizard of Oz WADDLE BOOK.
"An ingenious toy book: the reader could take the diecut figures and assemble them into three-dimensional models which, when placed on the provided sloping runway, would "waddle" down it under their own weight. The waddling figures portray Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion, and the Wizard."— Biblio.com
