MOVABLE STATIONERY December 1995
Volume 3 Number 6
Children's pop-ups, movables and novelty books: A short history for collectors
How "Griffin and Sabine's" author got into pop-up books
Nick Bantock
Part If
Michael Dawson Bath, England Bookano/Strand produced many other pop-up titles such as The story of Jesus ©1936, Hans Andersen's
fairy stories, ©1936, and even a make-it-yourself pop-up
booklet called The Bookano adventure and building book (also 1936 and now quite rare). Although Giraud patented the "living model" concept worldwide, his limited resources evidently prevented him stopping Harold Lentz from flagrantly breaching the copyright with a series published in New York during the 1930s under the Blue Ribbon imprint. Lentz was a gifted graphic artist of the German school (whereas Giraud was never more than competent, either as a writer or illustrator) and produced his books for a richer market. The Blue Ribbon titles such as Pinocchio (1932) and Jack the giant killer (1933) have better graphics and a higher quality of production than any of the Bookano equivalents, yet all Lentz's innovations were derived from England.
Far more original were the animated books of Julian Wehr evidently another American immigrant -
from Europe who produced, during the 1940s and early 1950s, a series of charming, ingenious moving books for (among others) the Garden City Publishing Co. and/or the Duenewald Printing Corp., both in New York. These -
exploited improved Webb Offset color printing technology and plastic ring binding, both of which lowered cost without cheapening the product. Wehr's graphic style derives from Disney's, but the way he produces telling movements in his pictures with the simplest of mechanical means has an elegance almost worthy of Meggendorfer. He was prolific, producing over 30 movables in less than a decade, the patented designs being marketed through his firm Wehr Animations. Most of the usual nursery rhyme and pantomime subjects were treated such as Animated story rhymes and Puss in Boots (both 1944).
Continued on page 8
Pop-up is an unfortunate term for a genre of books. The very word pop evokes insubstantial fashion and slightness of fad. That's a cruel handicap for any form that would take itself half-seriously. I wonder to what extent pop has kept pop-ups trapped as light-weights in the bookish arts. Suppose the same person who christened the Chinese game Mah Jong (roughly translated as the twittering of sparrows, after the noise the tiles made while being mixed), had also named pop-up books. They might now be called something like rising leaves. Would we not have a little more respect for their artistic potential, or am I, a defender of the faith, just waxing pretentious? I began my own assault on the pop-up universe in 1989 with two title proposals: The old lady and Zodiac. The old lady was small, humorous and quirky idea, based on the traditional sick verse, that quickly found a publishing home at Viking and sold very well as a children's book. But, Zodiac, which had a lot of potential for rich artwork, never made it off the ground because it was unashamedly an adult art book. It was perceived that adults wouldn't buy pop-up books for themselves, they had to have a child lined up for surrogate ownership. I contested the point, but in my pre-Griffin and Sabine days I was without power. I gave up on the notion of creating a cross between paper-sculpture, painting and text. Instead I indulged myself by having enormous fun making another four small, dark humored pop-ups plus a couple of mature education pop-ups based on animal
locomotion.
Last year, after finishing the third in the Griffin and Sabine trilogy, I decided to use my newfound market power to resurrect my theory that an aesthetically pleasing and dramatic pop-up would be of interest to a lot of real live grown ups. Continued on page 2