The ‘Abecedarian’ of My Favorite Things: Wild & Wacky Books from the Popuplady’s Collection
(reprinted from ABC Newsletter; vol 13, No. 2, Fall 2001)
Ask me to talk about my book collection, and you’ll think you have asked someone about their grandchildren. On my face an immediate smile and the offer, “May I show them to you?” Being the ‘Popuplady’, one would expect me to confine this passion to pop-up books. Not so! After seeing the Yale University exhibition (1988) entitled, Eccentric Books, I co-opted the name for another division of my collection.
My definition of eccentric is one which only I can define. The ‘books’ tickle my fancy, appealing to some inner funny bone or odd curiosity. They are on unlikely subjects, have removable parts, or become some other object. They need not have pop-ups.
With my favorite books spread all over the room, I asked myself, “How was I to tell you about these disparate and off-beat books? This being theABC Newsletter, what better way than to present them than in alphabetical order?
A
Alphabet books are the cornerstone of any children’s book collection. While I have several, I want to introduce you to Květa Pacovská, the Czech artist who illustrates her children’s books with bold colors and broad brush strokes. The stand-outs have die-cuts, pop-ups, flaps, and may use foil. Text, if any, is minimal. Going through her books is an adventure.
I take pride in my Artists’ books which are as unique as each artist’s viewpoint. For example, Pen in Hand by Sarah Peter, (1996) edition of 125, is an event to read. A singular fabric shirtpocket with a buttoned flap is opened revealing a nerdy plastic pocket-protector in which there is a black plastic pen. When a middle ring is removed, the pen splits into two parts lengthwise on a hinge revealing a series of narrow ‘pages’ containing quotes on writing by famous people, e.g. “Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.”-Gloria Steinem.
B
Books with punch-outs, 3-D glasses, or any removable parts will have a listing in the “accessory’ field of my data base. The most unusual accessory used is the reader’s own Body parts! I have several books requiring fingers and hands to enliven the story. A Magic Nose: A Book of Nasal Illusions is the most hilarious. Open any page and put in your nose to complete the picture, e.g. Haägen-Schnoz: put nose in nasal slot and be the flavor du jour.
C
How shallow my collection would be without the children’s Classics! Winnie the Pooh is my all-time favorite but has a unique version among my eccentric books. It’s called, Pooh Unplugged-the psychological profile of 100 Acre Wood. Try to imagine the Pooh gang in S & M gear projecting such personalities as: Piglet, the insecure stutterer; C. Robin, the enabler; Owl with delusions of grandeur. This book gets, well, you know, kinky.
Ahem! Getting back to C.
Clothing is represented by several Bonnie Books (Jack-in-the-book series) in which a person or animal’s head and legs unfold around a grommet and each page of the book changes their costume in keeping with the text. The Bonnie book featuring Gabby Hayes will date many of us.
D
It’s hard to express what’s so endearing about The Mother and Baby Animal Books series. In these books, the cover is in the mother animal’s shape (tiger, kangaroo, bear, gorilla) and has a slit where a die-cut baby, a Doll if you will, is tucked. The child may hold the baby while listening to the story. The illustrations are lush. A warm tableau indeed.
PL8SPK (pronounced Platespeak), defines for me a successful book, that is, a book wherein all elements work together to get its message across. In the shape of a license plate with metal covers, PL8SPK‘s author writes children’s classics and other stories drawing on the one million vanity plates in California, never using the same one twice. For example, LILRED RIDING HOOD: DDANGER DUZZ LURK IN THE WOODS. IKNO. IMAWOLF. MIPREY. CANT MISHER IN THAT NTICING FIRENGN RRRED GETUP, etc. One must do something while Driving in California’s legendary traffic!
E
Earthquake! is another successful book. In addition to all the information about earthquakes, the dioramic cover shows a 4-story building surrounded by trees. Pull the ring extending from the cover and the house and trees rattle and shake creating a loud vibrating sound! Now that’s an Experience!
F
Children will openly express a fascination with bodily Functions. Behold, The Gas We Pass and Terry Toots!, obviously both about Farting. Both books are part of a series on subjects usually not spoken of in polite society and but are as tasteful as one can be considering the subjects.
G
Few among us remember those prim, cross-legged secretaries taking shorthand, Pittman or Gregg. My Alice in Wonderland and The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle were written as exercises for secretarial students. Eccentric indeed! Pop-up and movable books are referred to as ‘toy books’. Several of mine incorporate actual Games. There are those with bead or jigsaw puzzles, spinners, and one particular series, shaped like
Gameboy, with thumb-buttons on the covers.
H
Oh Joy! My Hanky books hang-out in H! They remind me of Tuesday Assemblies in elementary school (P.S. 93 in the Bronx) when we would have to dress in a crisp white blouse or shirt and bring a Handkerchief which was inspected for cleanliness. All the precious items in this category, especially difficult to acquire, are in book or greeting card form. My favorites have movables like those by Julian Wehr with a single movable spread. The Little Golden Book, Marge’s Little Lulu and Her Magic Tricks, Things to Make and Do with Kleenex, (’54) sits on the same shelf, the harbinger of the end of hanky use.
I
What child doesn’t like noise and music? (Often the same thing!) Besides books which incorporate piano keyboards using microchips, children (like me!) can have the immediate experience of musical Instruments playing my books shaped like drums, castanets, maracas, and tambourine equipped with parts to create the appropriate sounds. Me gusta the castanets!
J
I especially love a Joke in book form. Waiting on my shelves for the unsuspecting are books whose spines bear no resemblance to their pasted-down illustrated covers. For example, the spine of one reads, The History of Texas, the cover says, How to Raise a Dog. When the book is opened, a rubber frankfurter jumps out on a coil from a gouged niche in the pages! Hotdog!
K
A way to figuratively Kill an idea one hates would be to shape the book espousing the idea into a gun. I have two such items both ‘killing’ topics not dear to me, Economics and Computer Programming. Bang! Bang! They’re dead!
L
Speaking of Languages, I don’t believe one exists without cursewords. A movable book with multi-split pages is called, Thy Father is a Gorbellied Codpiece! Create over 100,000 of Your Own Shakespearean Insultsby mixing and matching Elizabethan adjectives, verbs and nouns.
M
I love books which cleverly use Mirrors. The dearest of all is Mirror, Mirror on the Wall from the 1940s. The reader pulls down the paper-hinged Queen seated at her vanity table who then looks at herself in a real mirror.
N
Topping the eccentric subject list is the book, Nosepicking for Pleasure. Enough said.
Pop-up Needleholders, those illustrated folded papers where various size sewing needles are kept, are among the most precious of my ephemera. Usually of German origin, finding these rare treasures is a thrill.
O
gives me the Opportunity to ask why there aren’t more Origami or pop-up books originating in Japan where the tradition of making structures with paper is long and venerated.
P
Have you seen the faux writing Pads on which celebrities like O.J. Simpson and Chelsea Clinton presumably doodle their inner thoughts, OJ at his trial (yellow legal pad), Chelsea at Stanford (marbled notebook)? Bill Gates’ Personal Super Secret Private Laptop boasts the software, ‘Microspoofs’ Internal Document of Secret Words, like LYSHO-Lie your silly head off. These clever facsimiles are filled with irreverent minutiae. Who thinks of all these things?
Q
Quirky is the only way I can describe Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book. The first edition has a removable ‘flattened’ fairy who has met its fate by being slammed in the diary of the Victorian, fairy-hating, young Angelica Cottington of England. The final pages are banded in brown paper “to protect the innocent”. The fairies seek their revenge by turning the grown-up diarist into a nymphomaniac!!! Imagine my surprise at seeing it prominently displayed in the children’s section at Barnes and Nobles. Clearly, no one had read the book!
R
Pop-up books housing phonograph Records are prizes in my collection. Children’s classics, some by Disney but the best by Hallmark, boast carousels of dioramic scenes from classic stories like Pinocchio or The Sword in the Stone allowing children to interact with the scenery, sometimes with punch-out figures, while listening to the music.
S
I love the ingenious use of Strings in books and ephemera. The earliest examples I have are a Victorian-era Bon Marché (the French department store) postcard whose strings cause the quarter-cut illustrations to morph [or dissolve] into a new picture, and The Story of String and How it Grew (1916) where a real string moves through each page relating to the changing story.
T
Few books in my collection are more dramatic than those I call, Turn-intos. They are more than just books. With proper manipulation, they become dolls or firehouses or animals. Such clever people are paper engineers!
And clever were the first artists who created the Tunnel book or peepshow. Initially made for promotional purposes, like the opening of the Thames Tunnel in 1851,tunnel books have become popular with artists, including Edward Gorey.
U
My most Unique item, the only one-of-a-kind I own, is the artist book of The Pit and The Pendulum written by Edgar Allen Poe. Housed in a wooden crate is a hand-crafted guillotine stage. When the pendulum is moved, a miniature classic book rises from a pit. Hardly a toy but so effective!
V
All my antique Valentines are movable and where possible, reflect on my family life. Dear to me is the plucking double-bass player (son, Ben) and the finger-wagging uniformed cop (son, Andrew).
W
Without breaking a sweat, I can turn the pages of The 60 Second Work-out-A Pop-Up Action Book by Carla Dijs and lose a few pounds laughing as the zoftig woman exerts her ‘thunder thighs’.
I can ‘time’ these ‘workouts’ on my tick! tock! time to go out
Wristwatch, a series of four books with clockfaces, movable hands, and wrist straps, each covering a time of day and the events occurring at that time, e.g. lunch time will have titled-pictures of foods.
X
All I want is Music! Music! Music! which I get with books incorporating instruments like the Xylophone. The Sing-A-Song Playerbook! (1938) has an 8 inch metal xylophone, stick, and songbook instructing note-by-note playing. Ben launched his musical career with such a toy!
Y
Yuk! More bodily functions. From the French children’s book, loosely translated as, The Little Mole who wanted to know who pooped on his head (De la petite taupe qui voulait savoir qui lui avait fait sur la), matching up size and color with the right animal (not published in the US. Duh!!?) to the series, Smelly Old History- Scratch ‘n’ Sniff your way through the past. Do we really want to experience the vomitorium in Roman Aromas? (You probably think by now I’m perverted.)
Z
Zoo books are bountiful in any children’s book collection. The recent Bembo’s Zoo- An Animal ABC Book using the Bembo typeface to create zoo creatures stands out in mine for originality.
The Great Menagerie from 1884 is the archetype of the Golden Age of Pop-ups with rich chromolithographic colors and life-like animals behind three-dimensional bars.
Zis for Zany like most of my Eccentric Books and, maybe, like me too!
