New Roles for Old Favorites

At 2 years old, Julie Anna Guzman is already a finicky consumer of books.

Picking at a shelf in Los Angeles’ downtown Central Library, she tossed aside volume after volume, stopping only when a critter leaped from the pages into her face.

“Rana,” Julie Anna said excitedly in Spanish, giggling at the pop-up book.

“What is it in English?” asked her sister, Veronica, 24.

“Frog!” proclaimed the pigtailed toddler from South Los Angeles.

Books with pop-up pages or movable pictures have been delighting small children for more than 200 years, and they continue to play a role in developing early literacy skills, education experts say.

Blurring the line at times between literature and toys, such books not only are bait for children’s attention but can also captivate them longer once they are hooked.

“Their main value is that they’re so much fun,” said Anne Conner, manager of children’s services for the Los Angeles City Public Library system. “It’s just another way for kids to get excited about reading.”

In the pop-up book world, creators and enthusiasts often prefer to call them “movable” or “interactive” books because the phrase is more descriptive of the entire genre, which includes not only unfurling figures but also lift-the-flap, peekaboo pictures. Some have pages that come to life when wheels are turned or tabs are pulled.

Books with movable illustrations date back to at least the 14th century, and their primary audience was decidedly adult and scholarly, historians say. Some early volumes, called vovelles, featured layers of revolving disks that charted planetary movement. Others had movable parts illustrating human anatomy.

Movable books for children were developed in the 18th century, according to Ann Montanaro, president of the Movable Book Society and author of a book on the genre’s history. Those early works had pages with folded flaps that revealed pictures underneath.

For much of this century, movable books aimed for a young audience, sticking mostly to tried-and-true plots and characters from fairy tales and popular cartoons. But over the last 15 years, there has been a blossoming in the creative content of such books, experts say.

There are more original story lines, and the art has become more intricate and elaborate than ever.

Some of the pop-ups are so dramatic that they seem like works of architecture, said James T. Sinski, professor emeritus of medical mycology at University of Arizona.

“Today what the engineers are doing is piling structure on top of structure to make them more complex,” said Sinski, who organizes an annual pop-up book exhibit featuring hundreds of titles.

Perhaps to keep up with an increasingly multimedia world, paper engineers have also added sound effects or lights to some books.

“You’re constantly looking for something to add, to increase interest,” said Waldo Hunt, founder and chairman of Intervisual Books Inc., the largest producer of movable books in the world, which publishes its own works and packages books commissioned by publishing giants such as Random House.

Every year, 700 to 1,000 movable book titles are published, estimates Hunt, whom other experts--including market analysts--consider the premier authority on the industry.

Worldwide, Hunt said, retail sales for movable books total about $1 billion a year.

Because the whimsical art often dwarfs the accompanying text, movable books have a bad name among some parents and educators, said Douglas Pardon, an associate professor at Westminster College who specializes in early childhood education.

“They’re grouped with comic books as fluff reading,” Pardon said. “Most teachers would be embarrassed to use them in the classroom beyond grade two.”

But the genre could serve older children well, especially those who show little interest in reading, Pardon said.

Indeed, the industry has been publishing more crossover books in recent years to woo older children and adults, Hunt said. There also has been a resurgence of works on subjects such as airplanes, nature and the human body--topics whose didactic qualities evoke the movable scientific books of centuries ago.

Movable books are much more fragile than regular texts, but libraries still try to stock them because of their popularity.

The 87 community libraries of Los Angeles County have a few thousand volumes, many of which are in circulation, though not always in great condition. In the city of Los Angeles, the Central Library alone has about 700 titles on reserve and another 150 in circulation.

As for Julie Anna Guzman, not only do pop-up books catch her attention more than other books, they also stoke her imagination, said her sister.

“She can’t read,” Veronica said, “but she’ll start making up the story just according to what’s popping up on the page.”

* SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIVING: Poetry and fantasy such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Children’s Hour” capture youthful imagination. E5