Beautiful Book #42

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:  A Pop-up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Original Tale by Robert Sabuda. Little Simon. 2003.

While we're on the topic of movable books, I might as well share my contemporary pop-up selection. Robert Sabuda has been designing pop-up books since 1994 and is widely considered a contemporary great of 3D paper engineering. He won the biannual Meggendorfer prize three times in a row between 1998 and 2002, and he's the one name people tend to know off the top of their head when the topic of pop-up books comes up. I'm sure you've seen at least a few of his his books, as he has been remarkably productive over the last 20 years. On occasion, I've seen his books show up at Chapters and Winners in their bargain books sections. If you ever have similar luck, snatch them up, because they are fabulous to own, to show off, to collect and to give to others.

I could have chosen any one of a number of his titles for this list but not only am I partial to his take on Alice I am also keen to have his version stand next to those of Moser and Oxenbury who are also on the list. Influenced by paper engineering greats such as mid-20th-century, Czech Vojtěch Kubašta who also produced a pop-up version of Alice, Sabuda has pushed the boundaries of the movable format further than any of  his predecessors. His 3D designs spring high from the page, he uses uses ingenious devices to accommodate text, he hides sub-pop-ups inside attachments on the page, and he sometimes uses telescoping devices to play with perspective (as shown below with Alice's fall into the rabbit hole). Enjoy the pictures I've included here, but make a point to get your hands, delicately, on the real thing. And if there is someone on your Christmas list for whom a wow-book would be appropriate, Sabuda might just be the answer you're looking for.