The first of his 30 or so pop-up books was The Christmas Alphabet (1994) and it quickly became a bestseller, setting a new standard in this art. I was forever cutting, folding and gluing.'Īfter studying art at the Pratt Institute in New York, he worked for a while in packaging - designing boxes for ladies' underwear - before finding his way into the world of children's books. 'I just knew I wanted to use paper to make scenes that moved.There were no books telling you how to do it, so I spent hours taking apart the pop-up books I was subsequently given to see how they worked, then made my own with old manila folders my mother brought back from the office where she worked. Tor Lokvig was the 'paper engineer', and that was the first time many of us had ever heard of such a thing.Īs a small boy in America, in the 1970s, Robert Sabuda knew nothing about paper engineering but when, by chance, he first encountered a pop-up book in the dentist's waiting room in Michigan, he was entranced and he knew instinctively that it was what he wanted to do. Particularly memorable was Jan Pienkowski's Haunted House: robust both in concept and construction, with its marvellously theatrical final spread and brilliant sound effects, Haunted House (1979) was - and remains - one of the best pop-up books ever. Such things go in and out of fashion, and in the late 1970s there was a boom in pop-up books in Britain. In the late 1700s pop-up books were used to teach artists the rules of perspective, but since the 19th century, movable books, with cut-outs, peepholes and pop-ups, have made regular appearances in children's literature. Pop-up books are still often thought of as novelties, but in fact, says Sabuda, they date back to the 13th century, and the 'volvelles', or movable discs, used by monks to keep track of religious festivals, and by astronomers to chart the heavens. Too often things grind to a juddering halt while you try to manipulate moving parts that won't move. 'That's what we aim for.'Ī lot of pop-up books have an initial wow factor, but not all can sustain it. 'Well, I guess it's got that 'Wow' factor,' he replies. 'I could have sold half a dozen of them on the spot,' I tell Sabuda when we meet.

A movable feast book