Beyond the Printed Page: Robert Sabuda is the superstar of the modern pop-up book

Snippets from an article By Karen Benfield in The National Post

“Robert Sabuda is a man of many dimensions. In the author and illustrator’s hands, children’s stories unfold — and also tumble, pop, fly, rise up, spin and leap from the page. Sabuda is the modern master of a technique used to bring text to life since the 13th century. In the realm of pop-up books, Robert Sabuda stands out.”

“In his telling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the gleaming Emerald City rises from two pages and a hot-air balloon swells and hovers over another. In his Peter Pan, Captain Hook’s ship sails forth as if it might leave the book. In his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare really dunk the Dormouse in a tea pot, and can do it again and again, as you desire. In his hands, and then in yours, books are transformed into places to visit and make things happen.”

“He has led the way,” says Ann Montanaro, founder and director of the Movable Book Society, an organization devoted to literature with moving parts. In 1994, Sabuda published his first pop-up book: Christmas Alphabet, featuring all-white pop-ups “that created new ways of making paper move,” Montanaro says. Today he is the creator of more than 20 movable fairy tales, classics, a pop-up Disney Alphabet and holiday books like The 12 Days of Christmas, which has a page with a 26-centimetre tall paper tree festooned with twinkling lights. He is co-creator of eight other pop-ups about dinosaurs, beasts, fairies and other creatures. He is big in Japan (“It’s a culture that loves paper,” he notes) and his books are worldwide bestsellers that have been translated into more than 30 languages.”

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>>> Beyond the Printed Page: Robert Sabuda is the superstar of the modern pop-up book, by Karen Benfield in The National Post