Costco Connection - November 2004

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Robert Sabuda’s book America the

Beautiful features intricate and detailed pop-up spreads of American landmarks, such as Mount Rushmore.

AN INSIDE VIEW OF THE BOOK INDUSTRY

Another masterpiece by Robert Sabuda pops up

A paper cut above

By Hope Katz Gibbs MONIKA GRAFF It was the pop-up Adventures of Super assemblehismasterpieces.

Pickle that did it. “Getting the tornado to spin in The Matthew Reinhart. We showed the publisher

Illustrator Robert Sabuda, then 7, was Wizard of Oz—now, that was tricky,” Sabuda one idea of a T. rex ripping the meat out of refusing to cooperate for the dentist and, in an notes. “But the really tough part is getting the another dinosaur, and worried they’d think it attempt to keep him from escaping from the illustrations to pop down again and again.” was too gruesome. But everyone loved it. After office, Sabuda’s mom reached into a bin of What’s next for this creative genius? all, it’s realistic, and I think kids like that.” BB children’s books. Into his hands she placed “The Cretaceous period,” he says. “I have the first pop-up book the young man from a loved dinosaurs since I was a little boy, so I’m Hope Katz Gibbs is a freelance writer in tiny town in rural Michigan had ever seen. going to work on a new series with my partner Clifton, Virginia.

Not only did Sabuda relax enough to keep from biting the doc, but pop-up art is the style of illustration he came to master. Thirty-one years later, Sabuda has sold more than 2 million pop-up books and made the New York Times bestseller list three times for his pop-up versions of The Night Before Christmas, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (Alice, in fact, was named the New York Times Best Illustrated Book for 2003.)

What takes some time, he admits, is figuring out how to engineer those astonishingly intricate cut-paper creations. After about a year of toying around with reams of card stock, scissors, tape and ouchy paper cuts, everything works perfectly. Then it’s up to teams of skilled workers to meticulously

“Getting on the New York Times bestsellers list was probably the coolest thing that has happened in my career,” says the 38-year- old, who creates his masterpieces in a spacious loft in Manhattan, where he’s surrounded by jars of colorful art supplies and shelves of antique toys.

It was here that he constructed his latest work, America the Beautiful. Inspired by the classic 1895 poem by Katharine Lee Bates, this visual feast also seems destined for greatness. The pop-ups are stark white and stand out against backgrounds drenched in rich colors. And waiting on the final spread is Sabuda’s signature mini-book within the book where he’s created four more pop-ups to illustrate the lesser-known stanzas of Bates’ epic.

How does Sabuda decide how to illustrate each passage in the books he selects? “There are moments in the literature that I know need to be illustrated,” he says. “Luckily, the ideas come naturally.”