 So, there's a lot of different terms you could use to refer to what most people think of as pop-up books, mechanical moveables, and moveables is probably the best sort of overarching term because there's a lot of types of paper engineering and mechanical structures within books that allow them to move but that are not necessarily pop-ups. So, the progression of the mechanics of moveable books is fascinating because you can really see a escalation in complexity but also such a huge range of creativity in terms of what people have thought about when they're making these books. I really want people to know that there is a history to the pop-up books that they are used to finding on the shelves in bookstores or the library or in their own home that they go back much farther than that and that there's a probably a much broader range of ways that the books move than most people are aware of or have been able to interact with. A brief history of movable books would start about in the 13th century when you first see volvals in astronomical and celestial books. Just basically a circle, usually a multi-layered circle of paper within the book that the circles turn in different ways to tell you the positions of the stars or the constellation, something like that. Then you sort of jump forward to the mid to late 19th century when movable books are being made for children and you're starting to see new formats. Then there's a little bit of a drop-off with the World War I after which there's another big influx of new publishers and American publishers beginning to create pop-ups and this you see the same thing after World War II and by now it's just a genre that almost everybody is familiar with, almost everybody has a pop-up book on their shelf. Robinson Crusoe is an example of a late 19th century hinge book or flap book, one of the simplest mechanical structures and earliest examples of mechanical books aimed at children. I do want them to keep in mind that it's a reproduction, it's not the original from the 19th century, but it represents exactly what those books looked like and the experience of reading and moving them would have been like for people at the time. The Robinson Crusoe is in the collection because it provides an example of that early movable structure geared particularly at children. A series of amusing transformational scenes, Tricks of Naughty Boys is a Lothar Megandorfer book, one of the most important figures in the history of movable books. He was active in Germany in the late 19th century. The book that I have pulled from the collection was published in 1899. It is in English and his books were produced in Germany as well as in London and New York. It works in the Venetian blind structure, so you have one image where a boy is doing something and you can't quite tell if it's good or bad, but when you pull down the tab to see the transformed image you see that he's thrown a ball and broken a window and shopkeepers running after him, something like that. So it's very humorous. A lot of the images would be very benign today in terms of naughty boys, but it gives you some insight into a certain time and place. We have a few other Megandorfer's, but the difference is that they are reproductions. Whereas this is an original from the time period, which is a big reason that I selected it. The Daily Express Children's Annual is an example of a post-World War I proliferation of movable books in the actual pop-up form. This was a series. The one I pulled is number three. What's most interesting to me about them is that they show sort of the proliferation post-World War I of the genre and how popular it was becoming. And here you really have a mix of much more text, so there's a lot more story, and then every few pages there'll be a pop-up. You see a real evolution in the mechanics of the books where we're moving away from flat structures that you have to physically do something in order to change the image versus with the Daily Express and these series call themselves living models, and so now all you have to do is open the page and you are going to see a pop-up even though they weren't quite called pop-ups yet at the time. Table Lay Yourself is a Wojtek Kubashta book. Kubashta was Czechoslovakian and like Megandorfer is one of the biggest names in the history and evolution of movable books. The book's from about 1960 and it really demonstrates the bold and vivid colors that he used in his illustrations and pop-ups. The main things I want people to take away from a Kubashta book is knowing that they are looking at a book made by one of the most important people in the history of movable books, but also to just really sort of delve into the color and the texture and the depth of the images. This is one where you might not even notice if there's words because you're so drawn into the images. A pop-up field guide to North American wild flowers is an example of a Sean Sheehy artist book. We have number two out of 30. Sean Sheehy, who is a contemporary artist, bookmaker and paper engineer, handmade paper, everything hand cut and hand constructed. We're very lucky to have an example of one of Sean's original books. The other thing that I really like about this field guide is that he's taken a historical content base in terms of field guides to flowers that we're all used to but he is also inserted an LGBTQ message into it and when you read the descriptions of the flowers at the back you sort of see that there's a political human touch that you wouldn't of course see in a historical field guide to wild flowers. So it's both beautiful to look at. The flowers are very striking as they pop out but there's a lot of meaning inside of the book as well. Welcome to The Neighborhood is a pop-up from 2015 and is a great example of an artist book that's been transformed into a mass market mainstream pop-up that anybody can purchase and enjoy and that he also did in like the field guide to wild flowers a handmade version but then that's his only book where he's also created a trade version that you could go into a bookstore probably and find yourself and the images are of the homes that insects that you find in your garden insects and other animals create for themselves so like a honeybee hive and he is he's found a way through paper engineering to bring those incredible you know homes that some animals make for themselves to life and so that you get like an up-close view into them. So these books are all held in the rare book collection of the Monsenter for Archives and Special Collections which is open and accessible to anybody. You don't have to be affiliated with the University. These can be used by faculty and in the classroom in a lot of different ways either by focusing on the structure and format and you see or I see a lot of art classes coming in to do that. There's several classes here at the University where in the end students make their own book artist book basically so having a broad pop-up or movable book collection contributes to that learning. If faculty members want to bring students in or look at these books for their own purposes we're open to anyone and everyone but the best thing to do is to send an email talk about your interests your objectives what you hope to get out of it and find out what relevant materials we have. To think about the history of accessibility of books how books started out being just for the wealthiest and the most literate and most educated and movable books are part of that transformation into where they became something that was for everybody mass mass produced and aimed at a general public. I'd love people to know that the movable books are just sort of a drop in the bucket of the type of materials that we collect in rare books. We have a huge range of physical structures formats genres but also content and we'd love people to come in and explore.