Robert Crowther has been publishing pop-up surveys of modes of transportation at a rate of about one a year since 2006, and the relative simplicity of the papercraft in the three books in this attractive series - Ships, Trains, and Flight - are a reminder that pop-up books were not always made so delicately that young children could hardly touch them.

Ships, which we requested for review from publisher Candlewick Press, does a subtle bit of rethinking of standard pop-up orientations and makes a smart move in tilting the book sideways, wall-calendar-style, to allow artist Robert Crowther to build grand pop-up constructions along the center spine in simple, boxlike shapes that are given nuance and complexity in their detailing, rather than the many delicate paper parts that come together in the books of artists like Robert Sabuda, whose fragile and fascinating constructions come together in a way that suggests a role for computer modeling in papercraft. And it works. Ships engages children with detailed popups, colorful diagrams, and many small moving parts, with blocks of text arranged around pictures and diagrams in a layout of bite-sized chunks of information that young children can explore with adult guides and older ones can consume rapidly.






Parents will enjoy the clean, modern look Crowther and Candlewick have given the series, which has pulled the artist from the shadows of some previous pop-up work that looks more childlike and a little more visually dated.

All three of these books are significantly discounted on Amazon.com, selling for $10-$12, compared with a cover price of $18 each.


The artist also has a new book called Pop-Up House of Inventions that explores the origins and workings of household objects. Like the other books, it's oriented wall-calendar-style, and looks fascinating. - Jeremiah