PHOBIAS
We all have phobias - my main one is fear of spiders. So why not a pop-up book that features
a huge spider, a dentist about to cram a drill in your mouth, a crowded elevator, and a filthy public bathroom (with a
pop-up toilet that actually requires you to lift the toilet lid with your fingers)? Note - it also features fear of clowns,
high places, airplane crashes, snakes, public speaking and being buried alive. Perfect pop-up for your 12 year old nephew.
(pictures from The Pop-up Book of Phobias - Gary Greenburg, Balvis Rubess, and Mathew Reinhart)
WORST EVER OCEAN VOYAGE
There are lots of pop-up books that feature ships. The pop-up format lends itself to the 3D nature
of the sails, the hull, etc... But how about a trip on a famine ship, where most people die during the voyage? This book
even features a lift-the-flap of a body being thrown overboard. However, it does have one of the best pop-up sailing ships I've
ever seen. By the way, the caption for the first image above (the people living in the hold of the famine ship) reads 'As we try to
rest in our bunks, the sickness all around us adds to our misery.' This might be the worst Yelp review ever...
(picture from Life on a Famine Ship - A Journal of the Irish Famine - Duncan Crosbie)
PREPARING A MUMMY
As we all know, preparing a mummy for entombment is a tricky process. You have to remove the brain through the
nose, pull out all the internal organs,
and replace everything with inert materials. So why not capture that moment where the preparer has a deal stuck up the guy's nose
going for the brain, and also a pull-tab of a guy in a ceremonial mask pulling an organ out of the guy's side? Maybe the liver, its kind of
hard to tell. (picture from Egyptian Mummies - A Pop-up Book - Roger Stewart, Jose R. Seminario)
CULTURAL APPROPRIATNESS APPARENTLY HAS ITS LIMITS
The book industry is multi-national. And it is not uncommon to prepare different versions of a book for different cultures.
For example, you might translate the text to a different language. But what if you have a book with a very
culturally specific heroine (Snow White), and you are going to export it to a land where most people are not white? Well, the name is a problem,
but maybe any character might be 'pure as the driven snow', and threfore named Snow White. I know, it's a stretch, but just maybe.
So you decide to keep the name, but change the skin tone,
that way kids of other cultures might still relate. The original cover has a white Snow White surrounded by a group of horny old white guys,
and the newer cover has a brown skinned Snow White (with a decidedly Polynesian-esqe hairdo), this time surrounded by a group of younger
looking brown skinned dudes. I know, they were originally 'the seven dwarves', but c'mon, I can't write that... (see first two images above).
But if you go out of your way to make a brown skinned Snow White with her brown skinned group of admirers for the cover,
then why would you use the same internal pages in both versions of the book? It's hard to say what skin tone her 'admirers' have,
not-exactly as white as the original version's cover, but not as brown as the other cover. I guess that's the point.
(pictures from Snow White Pop-up Picture Story and Snow White All Action Pop-up Book - published by Brown Watson)
WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS
OK, lets just get this part over with right now - the name of the book is Adventures in Dwarfland. I know. The name probably
wouldn't pass the sniff test these days, but, um. I just don't know what to say...
The book is a simple tableau type, where each page folds into a
stage-like scene with simple 90 degree folds. The drawings are cute, and the story is nice - the dwarves are friends with the animals, every one
gets along, most (but not all) of the animals wear clothes, and they even
have elevators in the trees and hot air balloons and stuff. The scene on the book's cover is simply an excerpt from a scene inside the book,
with the internal scene portraying everyone getting ready for a feast,
part of which is making bottles of raspberry juice. The scene inside the book shows the two tortoises on the teeter-totter crushing huge raspberries each time
the teeter-totter comes down (there are mice and dwarves that add a fresh raspberry to the block as the teeter-totter goes up, and a small drainage
path allows the juice to be collected). But on the cover the title of the book hides all the stuff concerning collecting raspberry juice.
So the scene on the cover looks like two tortoises on a teeter-totter, and each of them has severe bloody diarrhea. You're welcome...
(pictures from Adventures in Dwarfland - no author cited)
UM, SO HOW LONG DID THAT RESCUE TAKE?
This book is in the MATCHBOX HERO-CITY PRESCHOOL POP-UPS series, in which preschool kids are shown heros in
action. So what better way to demonstrate this than to have (on page 2 of the book) a speeding car crash through the ice on a frozen lake, and
settle to the bottom? Subsequent pages show the fire truck leaving the station, a 'rescue diver' in full dive gear swimming around the sunken car
assessing the situation, and finally a crane truck backed up to the lake pulling up the submerged, frozen car. You can even see the
hazy image of the driver in the frozen car on the lake bottom as the scuba diver looks around. And of course the final page
has the driver (dressed in a t-shirt) wrapped in a warm blanket with a cute nurse taking his pulse. I don't know how long a person would
survive in a submerged car in a frozen lake, but unless 'Ice Moutain' was just a couple blocks from the fire station and the crane
company, I doubt if our hot-rodder would have made it. But its always good to give the toddlers the fuzzy-wuzzy version, I guess...
(pictures from Ice Mountain Darice Bailer, Jesus Redondo, William C, Wolff)
HOW ABOUT A POP-UP BOOK ABOUT CLEARCUTTING A TROPICAL HARDWOOD FOREST?
