Presenting…Pop-Ups!
By Lisa Von Drasek

What comes to mind when I visualize a pop-up book is either a delicate piece of paper engineering that I fear ever allowing a child to touch, or a book that is an excuse for the dramatic surprise with no real narrative. There is a crop of pop-up books published this year that is so stunning and engaging, I hope you will take a leap of faith and provide your students with access to this genre's newest offerings.

Pop-up show-and-tell
Edna Moy, one of our third grade teachers, sets interactive and pop-up books aside as a unique activity for students who have finished their regular work. She presents the book to an entire group in a meeting. When demonstrating how to hold this very unusual kind of book, she asks students to carefully turn the pages and to ask for help if needed. She also doesn't become a wreck if pages are torn and damaged, as these books could not possibly last forever in a classroom situation.
Following are the current pop-up stand-outs and ways you can use these extraordinary interactive books.

A classic, uncaged
Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell (Little Simon, 2005, ISBN: 0-689-87751-X) This 22-year-old emergent reading classic is available in a new interactive edition. The popular read-aloud is refreshed with each lift-the-flap. "I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet. They sent me an…" A picture of an elephant unfolds, and the audience is guaranteed to shout out, "Elephant!" "He was too…" the kids will chorus, "Big!" as well as the conclusion of each segment, "I sent him back." Help children write their own letters to the zoo. What pets would they request?

One red dot's a lot
The pop-up-producing genius David A. Carter has two offerings this fall. For the very young, he has illustrated Who's Under That Hat? by Sarah Weeks (Red Wagon Books, 2005, ISBN: 0-152-05467-7). This is a color-concept book that poses a riddle on the facing page of the lift-the-flap surprise. "Sniffs and wags, and lots and lots of little black polka dots. Who's that under the red hat?" There are clues in the picture – the red hat is a firefighter's helmet and the front of a fire truck peeks from behind the flap.

A feat of paper engineering is Carter's One Red Dot: A Pop-Up Book for Children of All Ages (Little Simon, 2005, ISBN: 0-689-87769-2). On one level, this is a simple counting book. "One perplexing puzzle box and one red dot. Two twisting twirly gigs and one red dot." On a second level, the language abounds in tongue-twisting alliterations that are equally matched by the three-dimensional pop-up sculptures. Then there is that pesky red dot. Where is it hiding?

This is a great jumping-off point for students five and above to create their own pop-ups. For simple patterns, see Carter's website, www.popupbooks.com

Opposites attract preschoolers
Precocious British pop-up artist Robert Crowther produced his first book, The Most Amazing Hide-And-Seek Alphabet Book (Viking Kestrel Picture Books, 1978; Candlewick, third edition, 1999, ISBN: 0-763-60732-0) while still in college. It be- came an instant best-seller, revolutionizing the world of novelty books. Most engineered books of that time had no more than six pop-ups; this one had 26!

Crowther amazes once again with Opposites (Candlewick, 2005, ISBN: 0-763-62783-6). His generous use of color and clean graphic lines create an engaging, easy-to-use interactive demonstration of this early childhood concept. Push up the flashlight button and dark becomes light and back again. Pull down an enormous "one" on which is a tiny ladybug and see "many" crawling with the red and black insects.

Pop-up-o-rama!
If there was a paper engineer rock star it would be Robert Sabuda, who has stunned fans of the genre over the years with such diverse titles as The Movable Mother Goose (Little Simon, 1999, ISBN: 0-689-81192-6), Young Naturalist's Pop-up Handbook: Beetles with Matthew Reinhart (Hyperion, 2001, ISBN: 0-786-80557-9) and an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Little Simon, 2003, ISBN: 0-689-84743-2), just to name a few.

Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart team up to create Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs (Candlewick, 2005, ISBN: 0-763-62228-1). The first page of this young paleontologists' delight took my breath away. The raptors feel as if they are leaping off the page, and the meat-eating T-rex will cause viewers to jump back. The text is crammed with facts. I didn't know, for example, that all dinosaurs have been divided into two groups depending on the differences in their hip bones – the saurischian (sawr-ISS-kee-un), or lizard-hipped dinosaurs, and the ornithischian (or-nuh-THISS-kee-un). These helpful pronunciation guides are included throughout. The authors intersperse natural history information with historical developments and highlight famous paleontologists like Sir Richard Owen. Even our most jaded teens were begging for a turn at this amazing volume.

For more information about Robert Sabuda's astonishing productions, go to www.robertsabuda.com Here you can even take a peek inside the studio where he and Matthew Reinhart work their pop-up magic.

Look for Sabuda's newest title, Winter's Tale (Little Simon, 2005, ISBN: 0-689-85363-0) next month, just in time for the holiday gift-giving season.

Buy these books today!

Lisa Von Drasek is Children's Librarian at the Bank Street College of Education in New York, NY.