Young Naturalist’s Pop-Up Handbooks...

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Young Naturalist’s

Pop-Up Handbook: Butterflies

Young Naturalist’s

Pop-Up Handbook: Beetles

by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart

Hyperion Books for Children, 2001

These books are brilliant. Robert Sabuda and Max Reinhart, two spectacularly gifted “paper-engineers” largely responsible for the recent renaissance in pop-up books, have turned their scissors to science. Reinhart, who briefly flirted with the idea of med school before becoming an illustrator, and has a real feel for biology. The books are full of gems of information that satisfying simply to know:

“At rest, moths fold and flatten their wings to their bodies, while butterflies hold them upright.”

“One of the world’s heaviest beetles is the African goliath beetle, weighing in at nearly a quarter pound!”

But what really make these books sing are the clever, accurate, gorgeous pop-ups illustrations.

What a treat to be able to examine elegant and exotic insects in 3-D detail. Pull a tab and see how (and why) an Indonesian stag beetle’s mandibles strike fear into anything within its reach. Pull a tab and see how a South American morpho butterfly folds its dazzling blue wings to reveal a dull, though still quite lovely, brown and orange underside, better-suited for blending in among leafy branches.

There is even a little book within a book: “Beetle memories,” a family album of metamorphosis.

Each handbook also comes with a faux bug framed in faux wood under faux glass, ready to hang on a real wall. As proudly noted, no butterflies or beetles were harmed in the making of these books…

- j.a.g.