Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Pop-Up Books (Embracing My Inner Geek)


Embracing My Inner Geek is a feature hosted by Queen of Contemporary and enables bloggers to geek out once a week and ramble on about geeky and nerdish things. 

I love this feature by Lucy from Queen of Contemporary in which we are all encourage to embrace and discuss our own geeky traits.  I've decided to take part in this feature once a month because as it turns out, I'm a pretty geeky person! I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much I enjoy writing them.

Last time I took part in Embracing My Inner Geek, I discussed some of the literary artwork that I have adorning my walls at home.  Since then, I've walked around my house trying to see things from a different perspective.  See things in a way that a stranger coming into my home would view my house and my belongings. And that's really helped me to think of different topics for this feature. I have some fun things in store for you... but for today, I'm going to talk about a collection that I haven't talked about on this blog in awhile. 

Did you know that I collect pop-up books?  Not just any pop-up books - I focus on the paper engineering genius of Robert Sabuda and his sometimes co-creator Matthew Reinhardt. I'm in love with them.  Here take a look at (most, but not all) of my collection of their books...




What I love most about these books are the variety of stories and subjects that Robert and Matthew cover.  There are pop-up books there about monsters and fairies and dragons and butterflies and sharks.  There are fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast as well as other popular stories like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland and Narnia and The Wizard of Oz. They've covered Mother Goose and Cinderlla but there's also pop-up books about Christmas and Kwanzaa and endangered animals and also fun things like the alphabet using Disney characters as inspiration a counting book with pop-ups of cookies and a pop-up book about famous landmarks in the United States. It makes me really happy looking through these books!

I would have never have started this collection at all if I hadn't been for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz pop-up book that I saw many years ago when I was working at WHSmith. Or perhaps N saw it and mentioned it to me? Either way, in the Ottakar's nearby (before it was taken over by Waterstones), there was a stand displaying this beautiful pop-up book. And perhaps I'll write another post sometime for my love of The Wizard of Oz, but I just couldn't resist buying this beautiful creation.

And later on I saw Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ... and another pop-up book, and another.  Things spiralled pretty quickly out of control as you can see from that photo of my collection.




Most of the pop-up books that I have were given to me as presents.  For a few years there, every birthday and Christmas I could probably depend on N to give me some sort of pop-up book.  And not all of these books are available in this country.  Some were really hard to track down.  I even have two copies of one particular pop-up book because N found me a hard-to-find book and then it was re-released with an added pop-up.  Of course I needed both copies despite 98% of the two books are the same!




Some of the books really surprise me.  I'm not even that big of a fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, but I also can't not have this book in my possession.  I need it and all of these books in a way that I find hard to put into words.  And I'm pretty strict about these books too.  I don't mind sitting with the boys and looking through them together. They especially like the little side flaps that have smaller pop-ups and extra bits of information and stories, but they're not allowed to look at the books on their own until they're both older and until I can trust they aren't going to ruin the fragile pop-ups. And I keep all of the books in their original plastic wrapping as added protection!




I do love that the boys seem interested.  That we can all look at these pop-up books and wonder at how they were put together so wonderfully to pop out like they do.  These books have even inspired us to try making some simple pop-ups of our own, like this very simple Christmas tree.  N and I both made pop-up cards last year to give to each of the boys from us and they loved it.  Homemade cards are one thing, but homemade pop-up cards? That's going the extra mile.  A lot of the Robert Sabuda pop-up books are done in this very simple and yet classic style of using mostly white paper leaving the pop-ups to stand on their own without the distraction of colour or other adornments. I like it.




I could probably share photos with you all day of my favourite pop-ups from these books. I just chose three books at random and opened them up.  I think they're all incredible.  And if you want to know more about Robert Sabuda or Matthew Reinhardt, here are the links to their websites...


So that's it for me today, what do you think of my pop-up collection? 

And as always, like Lucy says, don't forget to wear you geekery like a badge!

8 comments:

  1. I ADORE that Alice in Wonderland pop-up book. So pretty!

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    1. It's filled with so many beautiful pop-ups as well. Gorgeous.

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  2. Wow that are some very pretty pop up books. Can imagine you like to collect them!

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    1. Sadly they don't come out as often as I'd like, but it's so great to sit there with a couple of them and just slowly turn the pages and marvel at the craftmanship!

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  3. I loooooove pop-up books!!! They're such gorgeous little works of art all on their own.

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    1. Oh they really are! I'm amazed at how something so wonderful and complicated can be created out of scraps of paper :)

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  4. That's beautiful!
    I collect pop-up books too~~

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  5. That's great!
    I collected pop up books too!

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