Science & Nature

The physical sciences, flora and fauna, the human body, and ecology are all popular subjects for pop-up engineers, book illustrators, and the reading public.  Book artists also often look to nature for inspiration in creating their works.  This engagement has produced books that are vivid, dynamic, awesome—just like the natrual world that surrounds us.

Animals Showing Off.  Washington, D.C.:  National Geographic Society, 1988 (Intervisual Communications).

“A National Geographic Action Book.”
Paper engineering by John Strejan and James Roger Diaz.

Nick Bantock’s Runners, Sliders, Bouncers, Climbers.  New York:  Hyperion Books for Children, 1992 (Intervisual Books).

Paper engineering by Rodger Smith.
Reading Bantock’s books first brought pop-ups to Mr. Goralnick’s attention, spurring him on to explore the vast landscape that movable books offer.

Nick Bantock's Wings:  A Pop-up Book of Things that Fly.  New York:  Random House, 1991 (Intervisual Communications).

Paper engineering by Rodger Smith.

Julie Chen.  Panorama.  Berkeley, Calif.:  Flying Fish Press, 2008.

Edition limited to 100 copies.
Using gate-fold sheets and two large pop-up panoramas, Chen admonishes the reader about the alarming environmental challenges facing us and the planet.
[Book Arts Collection].

Rebecca Goodale.  Salix / Willows.  Portland, Me.:  R. Goodale, 2005.

Designed as a compound flag book with silkscreened illustrations, this artists’ book is one in Goodale’s “Threatened and Endangered” series, for which she is creating books to document all of the species on Maine’s “Threatened and Endangered” lists.
[Book Arts Collection].

Frances Jones’s Nature’s Deadly Creatures:  A Pop-up Exploration.  New York:  Dial Books for Young Readers, 1992.

Designed by Electric Paper, London.

Christian Riese Lassen’s Secrets of the Sea.  Sydney, Australia:  Book Co., 2001.

Paper engineering by Gavin Wolf and Stephen Ramsay.

Jody Marshall’s In the Air and Everywhere:  The Scientific American Pop-up Book of Birds.  New York:  W.H. Freeman, 1994 (White Heat).

Illustrated by Elizabeth McClelland.

Jonathan Miller’s The Human Body.  New York:  Viking, 1983 (Intervisual Communications).

Designed by David Pelham; paper engineering by Vic Duppa-Whyte and David Rosendale.
Intervisual Communications, Inc., which produced this edition, reissued the work in 1993 as a portion of its annual corporate report and published it again in 2000 for the general public.

Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels.  The Amazing Pop-up Geography Book.  New York:  Dutton Children’s Books, 2000.

Paper engineering by Ruth Wickings.
Included in this book is a collapsed paper globe that expands to form a 3-D model of the Earth.

Shawn Wilder Sheehy.  Beyond the 6th Extinction:  A Fifth Millennium Bestiary.  Chicago:  Paperboy Press, 2007.

Edition limited to 15 copies.
Sheehy projects a futuristic biological extinction cycle caused by human activity—each of the fabricated species has evolved and adapted into the 50^th century c.e. despite the ecological chaos brought on by humanity.  Every page makes a visual reference to “polymer-based digital storage units (CDs)” to establish scale for the portrayed specimens.