Springing to Life

I call this exhibit “Springing to Life” because the books really do come to life. It’s not just a flat page with words on them. You can use your imagination and really take the story into further than just the words on the page. In the beginning in the 13th century in a monastery, a monk developed a paper device called a volvelle. And it’s a circular device that turns on the paper. This was used as a calculator. The church used it to determine where the moon was so that they could find feast dates. It wasn’t until around the 1700s that books were actually geared towards children. So this is a metamorphoses and one thing that I’ve notice researching these books is that they love to put men in dresses. As publishers we're trying to stay on top of the toy book trade, we get into the 19th century 3 dimensional books. So there are several different layers of images and by opening the book it throws it into 3 dimensions. Now the Germans had perfected the art of chromolithography or color printing. And so much of the work was sent there and they produced some very beautiful books. However when the first World War broke out, all ties to Germany were cut and moveable books kind of fell by the wayside. In the 1960s, along comes Waldo Henley Hunt and Ib Penneck. And they really revived the whole world of pop-up books. And Waldo Hunt was heavily influenced by a man named Kubasta. Kubasta was amazing. This is his Columbus. And he created this image that is 13 inches high, using some thread and paper. And this is something that had just never been done before. So here we have kind of a unique book. It’s called the Squeakem Book, from 1947. There’s a device inside, and if you push it together [sound] it makes something that resembles an animal sound. This is David Carter’s One Red Dot. So he uses different mechanisms to make things spin turn and pop. [Popping noise] Noise makers. Pull tabs. String, things that twist and turn. The Star Wars book is incredible. On one side, Luke Skywalker pops out and on the other side, Darth Vader pops out and they have light sabers that actually light up. It's amazing the technology they now put into pop-up books. Quite a number of people have said they remember some of these books from their childhood You may think they’re geared towards children, but I find that adults get as much or more pleasure out of them as children do.