With the Utah Humanities Council 15th annual Book Festival beginning this weekend and continuing through the month of October (see here for a full schedule), you’ll be hearing a lot about books this month. A lot of the talk will be about what’s in the books and who wrote them, but you’ll also be able to explore the art of making the book. For instance, on Saturday September 29th Ken Sanders’ Rare Books in Salt Lake will be hosting a lecture and book signing with master book artists Peter and Donna Thomas — “The Ascent of the Artist Book in the Age of the E-reader.” More on that later. Before then, you should check out the exhibit Pop-ups: Books That Spring to Life at Salt Lake’s Main Library.

Books have had movable parts for hundreds of years. In fact, they predate the printing press. Matthew Paris, a 13th-century monk, made hand-drawn books called volvelles that featured lift-the-flaps and peepshows. They were used to teach astronomy, geography and medicine. It took a few hundred years but people finally caught on that movable parts could also be for amusement, and by the late 19th-century books with pull-tabs and pop-ups became increasingly sophisticated and widespread.

The Library’s fourth-floor exhibit is filled with 200 pop-up books from the collection of Ann Montanaro Staples, who has been collecting, researching, and writing about pop-up books since 1986. Though her extensive collection includes almost all of the pop-ups books produced since 1900, most in this exhibit appear to be of relatively recent vintage.

These are the type of books that your kids love, but quickly destroy if they get their hands on them. There are your classic books on dinosaurs and princesses, but also a number of surprises: Wonder Woman jumps out in all her Amazonian glory in DC Comics Superheroes; amongst the bible story books there’s one called In The Beginning: The Art of Genesis where Jacob’s ladder pops up into transparent “stained-glass” windows; and squeezed in between a book on Humpty Dumpty and one about the old lady who swallowed a fly is a pop-up version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that has the feel of a graphic novel.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.