These Images Really Leap Off the Page

Who needs words in a book when menacing dinosaurs, funny bugs and Curious George spring forth from the pages?

Pop-up books, those hand-held marvels of paper engineering, have engaged readers for centuries with their whirl of foldouts, pull-tabs and wheels.

More than 300 works--many of which contain no text--are currently on display in the main gallery of the Los Angeles Central Library. The comprehensive exhibition takes viewers on a historical tour of the innovative craft.

“Pop Up! 500 Years of Movable Books” opens with a scholarly 1528 Italian cosmology that features a revolving disc or volvelle. But it quickly moves to more lighthearted, colorful fare such as Jan Pienkowski’s “Haunted House,” a book aimed at kids and the best-selling pop-up of all time. An elaborate blue Martian with octopus-like legs crashes through a bedroom window at one point in the story.

The tales of Little Red Riding Hood and Harry Potter also take three-dimensional turns here.

It’s not all kids’ stuff, though. Take, for example, Andy Warhol’s campy compilation of black-and-white photographs with a red can of Hunt’s tomato sauce rising from the binding. Another tongue-in-cheek book, “Shame of Our Museums,” includes cellophane panes that lift up to reveal figures in their skivvies. Both are discreetly installed in one corner of the gallery.

“The books really reach audiences across the board, no matter what your age or background,” co-curator Toria Aiken says. “Everyone has flipped through one at some point in their lives.”

A smaller accompanying exhibition, “Leaping Off the Page: Building of Pop-up Books,” illustrates the painstaking creative process of creating these books, which begins with a simple concept and develops into a complex web of paper. Several collaborators (author, illustrator, engineer) and hundreds of hand-finished procedures (cutting, folding, gluing) may be needed to complete just one book.

“The majority of the people who actually assemble the books are women because they tend to have smaller fingers and more dexterity,” co-curator Devin Price explains. “Some of the books are amazingly detailed, and you need a certain kind of skill in hand to work on them.”

Among the most intricate are the “carousels,” which fold out to form dollhouse-like dioramas. Tykes and grown-ups may find themselves immersed in “Botticelli’s Bed & Breakfast” by Pienkowski. The whimsical book transforms into a boarding house inhabited by famous figures in art history; your objective is to find them. (Hints: Michelangelo’s David, dressed in leaf-print boxers, brushes his teeth in the bathroom, while Whistler’s mother watches television in the den.)

Nearly all of the books in this exhibition are culled from the extensive collection of Waldo Hunt, chairman emeritus of leading pop-up producer Intervisual Books, who’s been credited with revitalizing the format 40 years ago. (The preeminent Children’s Book Fair held annually in Bologna, Italy, dubbed him “King of the Pop-up Book.”)

The special collections library at UCLA contributed a few of the older books.

Movables were originally created to help explain the principles of astronomy, anatomy and other sciences to adults. It’s unclear as to when the first one, um, popped up, but one of the earliest known examples is a 13th century philosophical discourse with a revolving disc that demonstrated the theories of a Catalan mystic. The books weren’t targeted toward children until the late 18th century, when European publishers began making fairy-tale books with lift-up flaps.

Pop-ups thrived in the decades that followed, but manufacturing nearly ceased when World War II erupted. Germany and France, which turned out the majority of movable works, devoted their resources to the war and shelved creation of the laborious books. Bookmakers in other countries, including Czechoslovakia and the United States, kept the genre alive, but the books didn’t regain popularity until Hunt started producing them in ‘60s.

Intervisual Books has since made more than 2,000 titles for publishers around the world.

“Believe it or not, I never even saw one pop-up book as a child,” says Hunt, who decided to get into the business after picking up a movable book by celebrated Czech artist Vojtech Kubasta. “I knew I had stumbled on something special. You really do fall in love with them. That element of surprise never fails to disappoint.”

“Pop Up! 500 Years of Movable Books,” Getty Gallery; “Leaping Off the Page: Building of Pop-up Books,” First Floor Galleries. Central Library, 630 W. 5th St., downtown L.A. Mondays-Thursdays, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Through Jan. 12. (213) 228-7040, www.lapl.orgevents