Who Knew Pop Up Books Can Be Like This?

It's never just a pop up book, at least not to paper engineer Robert Sabuda.  

Robert Sabuda's Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Sharks

We've all seen a pop-up book before, and chances are you pull a tab and something interesting pops up.  Simple.  

In the pop up books of Robert Sabuda however (along with his colleague Matthew Reinhart), you open the page and many events happen all at once.  The page literally bursts open and becomes alive, whether it's Alice chased by a flurry of playing cards in Wonderland, or a dinosaur with dangerous mouth and claws.  (Sure, the books in Harry Potter's world are more alive, but for now, we have Robert Sabuda to wow us.)

That's to say Sabuda's target audience isn't babies and toddlers (although who's stopping them from getting awed by this lovely cacophony on paper?)  If for a toddler, your regular plain old pop up book is already eye candy, think about the neurological and aesthetic implications Sabuda's technological marvels can do to a grown up person.  All that pivots and tabs and rich colorful illustrations and the threshold of paper exceeded.  Absolute genius.

(Note: You never buy a used pop up book.  Some of the pages will refuse to, well... pop.)

Anyway, people wage war with each other, invent missiles, etc.  And then there are those who take it upon themselves to engineer a piece of paper, and everyone comes out of it a winner.