SEASON’S READINGS : Books for Grown-Ups : How ‘Griffin and Sabine’s’ creator got into pop-up books

P op-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 lightweights 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 a 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 nature 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 adult pop-up would be of interest to a lot of real live grown ups.

All my pop-ups have been made with Intervisual, the Santa Monica-based book packager, and they have been very supportive of my odd notions. When I told my editor about my mission (it wasn’t really a mission, it was more of a bloody-minded determination to make a good idea work), she became enthusiastic. We put our heads together and came up with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “Kubla Khan” as recipient of “the creative treatment.”

I chose “Kubla Khan” because it was both old and futuristic--it could, at a push, claim the title as the first science-fiction poem. It emanated an air of decadence that made me think of heaped Persian cushions, the thick aroma of incense and the indulgences of the Victorian Orientalism. I also picked it because the text was the right length for six spreads, and the narrative was sublimely ambiguous.

The process of conceiving and constructing a pop-up is unlike anything else I’ve ever been involved in. It’s both torturous and infinitely entertaining.

Having picked my subject, I begin with a series of scribbles that transmogrify themselves into a set of graphite drawings, one for each of the spreads. I photocopy them, glue them to a thin card, then begin snipping and hacking with scalpel and scissors.

After that, I start bending, folding and sticking the bits together with glue stick or double-sided tape. The result is a mess. But it gives me a sense of where I’m going.

I repeat the process, building a more substantial pop-up. If I’m happy with what I’ve come up with, I glue the pages together to make a full dummy of the book, which I send to the paper mechanic.

The paper mechanic is to me what the Formula One racing car mechanic is to the local garage repairman! Over the next month or so he’ll consistently turn my paper inexactitudes into fine, smooth-running creatures. He sends his white card version back to me. I play again making further cuts and twists. He refines. If all is well, he sends me a large sheet that has the parts of the pops opened out and neatly nested together. Then comes the tricky part.

I have to do the color art to fit this higldy-pigldy flattened out jigsaw pattern. The first time I was faced with the task I thought it nigh on impossible, but having been through the problem a number of times I find it marginally less overwhelming. It requires a little retraining of the brain, much like an old-fashioned typographer learning to read the metal type back to front.

When I’ve completed the art, the paper mechanic color photocopies it and rebuilds it yet again. I make my final changes to both the art and the cuts. Color separations are made of the art, and the nesting sheet is drawn up for the printers. Then away it all goes to print in Hong Kong or Colombia with a wing and a prayer.

After a while, the proofs come back and small adjustments to color and die cut can be made, but mostly--what you did is what you get.

“Kubla Khan” was even more complicated because the art was only partially figurative and the cuts had to read as drawn edges, so they had to be exact.

In addition to that headache, I used a lot of gold powder in the painting, and we had to battle to get the really strong printed color we wanted. After a good deal of toing and froing it came together, and I admit to being proud of the result. I just hope to hell I was right in principle and there are enough adults out there willing to buy a painted paper sculpture version of “Kubla Khan,” with or without the surrogate kid.

“Kubla Khan “ was published this month by Viking. Also just published: “Averse to Beasts” (Chronicle), a box containing an illustrated book and live tape of Nick Bantock reading his dark animal poems to an audience of 500 wild animals.

And other pop - ups by Nick Bantock: “There Was an Old Lady,” “Jabberwocky,” “Solomon Grundy,” “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” “Robin Hood . “ The above are all by Viking.

KUBLA KHAN, A Pop-Up Version of Coleridge’s Classic by Nick Bantock (Viking: $12.95)

And Keep in Mind:

IMPERIAL SURPRISES A Pop-Up Book of Faberge Masterpieces (Abrams: $19.95 )

THE CHRISTMAS ALPHABET by Robert Sabuda (Orchard Books: $16.95 )

EYE MAGIC Fantastic Optical Illusions, An Interactive Pop-up Book (Artists & Writers Guild Books: $19.95)

AWAY IN A MANGER A Christmas Carousel Book by Ian Beck (Hyperion: $15.95)

THE MUMMY’S TOMB A Pop-Up Book by Robert Sabuda (Artists & Writers Guild Books: $8.95)

123 by Clotilde Olyff (Ticknor & Fields: $13.95)