Pop-up Books

AGE GUIDES: these are approximate recommendations:

• Pop-up books -- depends on the book

REVIEWERS: Alida Allison

* denotes San Diego writer and/or illustrator
** Age levels, when provided by the publishers, are included in the bibliographical information. Otherwise, category placements are our best approximations.

• Ceran, Milivoj, Keith Mosley, and Skip Skwarek. Dragon World: A Pop-Up Guide to These Scaled Beasts. New York: Harry Abrams, 2007. $15.95. ISBN 0-8109-
  5456-9.
• Harpur, James. Warriors: All the Truth, Tactics, and Triumphs of History’s Greatest Fighters. New York: Atheneum, 2007. $21.99. ISBN 1-4169-3951-2.
• Jenkins, Martin and Brian Sanders. Titanic. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2007. $29.99. ISBN 0-7636-3468-1.

Ceran, Milivoj, Keith Mosley, and Skip Skwarek. Dragon World: A Pop-Up Guide to These Scaled Beasts. New York: Harry Abrams, 2007. $15.95. ISBN 0-8109-5456-9.

This pop-up put-on treats dragons as if science had confirmed their existence: “Modern scientists had long declared that dragons existed only in stories. But recent fossil discoveries have led them to accept that dragons really existed.”
Each page unfolds into a tabletop sized 3-D “scaled beast.” European dragons are differentiated from Eastern and North American dragons and others. And, my, they are fabulous. Spiny and clawed and coiled, they pop up in red or gold or green from pages filled with some facts and a lot of well-crafted, authoritative-sounding fantasy. The backgrounds proffer as well portraits of other kinds of dragons, like Lindworms and Wyverns. In a grand finale, there’s an extra page to accommodate a most impressive skeleton. The book cover has scales on it (!) in this most enjoyable book.

A. Allison

Harpur, James. Warriors: All the Truth, Tactics, and Triumphs of History’s Greatest Fighters. New York: Atheneum, 2007. $21.99. ISBN 1-4169-3951-2.

From the Assyrians to the Aztecs and the Zulus, this marvelous 3-D cavalcade of military history is an eye-boggler, richly arranged, engineered, and illustrated. One sample page, The Spartans, has several artifact photos, two paintings—one a map, and a small fold-out map and booklet on the Battle of Thermopylae 480 B.C. Each page is complex. There are amazing special effects and add-ons, including two big fold out pages, little book inserts, sliding panels, and flaps. Text and captions are laid out on varied backgrounds very engagingly. Two of the pages are pretty gory—Samurai and Aztec, so this is for older readers. The back endpapers are fact-filled timelines-- and places to put the astounding number of “Picture Credits ” for a complexly-complied book like this. Information focused on the art and history of warfare presented in this format makes for a fascinating book.

A. Allison

Jenkins, Martin and Brian Sanders. Titanic. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2007. $29.99. ISBN 0-7636-3468-1.

This book is titanic. It’s a table-top world unto itself—quite magnificent when the heavy covers open out, you pull a tab, and the Titantic unfolds before your eyes. It’s a massive miniature with incredible detail: find those life boats! But this is even more than a fantastic trip onto the Titantic: included in various intriguing flaps and pockets are menus, a yellowing copy of the NY Times front page story of the ship’s sinking, a First Class ticket, a menu, a poster of some of the famus passengers, and a 32-page fine paperback replete with history, contemporary photos, diagrams of the ship—everything. Very impressive3 and worth the $30 proce for a work of art.

A. Allison