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We have been exploring the Robert Sabuda site and spent a while working on "Simple Pop-Ups You Can Make" and while we feel simple may be a bit misleading, it was fun.

This month on the site, they are giving away a copy of Maurice Sendak's Mommy? illustrated by frequent Sabuda collaborator Matthew Reinhart.

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: March 25, 2010

May 2-8, 2011, is Children’s Book Week. Each year, during this week, The Children’s Book Council hosts the Children’s Choice Book Awards. These are the best awards because the children are given a voice! I highly recommend checking out the thirty books that have been nominated for the six categories: k-2nd, 3rd-4th, 5th-6th, Teens, and author of the year. Then, along with your kids or classroom, go and vote for their favorite(s)—you have until April 29. The winners will be announced on May 2 at the Children’s Choice Book Awards Gala.

This year’s Children’s Choice Book Award finalists are as follows:

Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year

Shark vs. Train

by Chris Barton (Author), Tom Lichtenheld (Illustrator)

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 1 edition (April 1, 2010)

Publisher’s synopsis: Shark VS. Train! WHO WILL WIN?!

If you think Superman vs. Batman would be an exciting matchup, wait until you see Shark vs. Train. In this hilarious and wacky picture book, Shark and Train egg each other on for one competition after another, including burping, bowling, Ping Pong, piano playing, pie eating, and many more! Who do YOU think will win, Shark or Train?

Add this book to your collection: Shark vs. Train

How Rocket Learned to Read

by Tad Hills

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade; 1 edition (July 27, 2010)

Publisher’s synopsis: Learn to read with this New York Times-bestselling picture book, starring an irresistible dog named Rocket and his teacher, a little yellow bird. Follow along as Rocket masters the alphabet, sounds out words, and finally . . . learns to read all on his own!

With a story that makes reading fun—and wil

Today I’ve a bumper set of free activity sheets for you from children’s book authors and illustrators. Whether creating pop-up cards, designing posters for your home book corner or imagining what colour skin dinosaurs had is your thing, today there’s something for everyone.

Robert Sabuda is a preeminent children’s pop-up book creator, a paper engineer extraodrinaire. He has created pop up versions of many children’s classics, including Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Robert Sabuda’s webpage has a dedicated subsection packed with pop-up designs you can print and create yourself, including animals, celebrations and a whole series of Star Wars designs! For each pop-up design there’s a template to download and print, followed by detailed photo tutorials taking you through the process step by step.

Screenshot from Robert Sabuda's website (click to be taken there)

Robert Sabuda has collaborated on a dinosaur pop up book, but there are no free dino templates on his website. If dinos are your thing, then head over to Paul Stickland’s website. Paul Stickland has written a series of fantastic dinosaur books for the youngest of listeners, Ten Terrible Dinosaurs being one of our personal favourites. He’s also interested in paper engineering.

There are many dino colouring-in sheets to download on Paul Stickland’s site (right clicking to view image brings up full size image which can then be printed).

Elizabeth O. Dulemba has illustrated over 10 books, and one of the nicest things about her website is that every Tuesday she publishes free colouring pages for anyone and everyone to enjoy. She’s created a veritable treasure trove of colouring-in sheets, arranged by topic to include school and

Are you watching wynflete's winsome and heart warming Nerd Fighter: Australia videos featuring John and Hank Green's secret niece and nephew, Natalie and Calvin? Debbie is so creative. Her videos sneak up on you, take your hand and make you want to go skipping down the street.

She took John Green's Nerdfighter song and embellished it to become: "Nerdfighter Live." My family falls into almost every category of nerdfighter she (and John) thought of. Also, do not miss Nerdfighter Storytime.




...and thanks to Arthur Slade, I've discovered a new (to me) musical group, Arrogant Worms. Their song "It's Great to be a Nerd" also tracks our entwood rather precisely.

The popup book is an old favorite in the kidlit world, but the latest iterations are so sophisticated that they’ve inspired a new term for (or is it from?) their makers: paper engineers. Recently a book not even out yet has generated lots of interest on youtube; check out Marion Bataille’s 3-D ABC. It’s due out in October by MacMillan’s Roaring Book Press, the first book by this French graphic designer to be published in the U.S.

I first encountered the engineered version of the popup genre at my nephew’s house in North Carolina. His 6-year-old had received Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs for Christmas and was thrilled. Paper engineers (and pioneers) Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart collaborated on the project, which was published by Candlewick Press in 2005, each book made entirely by hand in Thailand or China. Encyclopedia Mythologica is due out in May.

For the Encyclopedias, Sabuda created popups for Reinhart’s story and illustrations, but both talented artists are also working independently now. Here’s a Barnes & Noble interview with Matthew about his creative process, and here’s Robert talking with the Wall Street Journal about some of his work. These two are an innovative, iconic and prolific phenomenon, and their influence will be felt increasingly in the world of multicultural books, no question.

Pop’n Kimchee is an early example of the use of popups – and the first multicultural popup title we know of. It’s also an example of just how much the art of popups has developed since it was published in 2000.

Sam Ita’s Moby Dick, a state-of-the-art popup book published in November 2007, features many thrills, including the Pequod opening in full sail, almost a foot high. Ita’s next book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea comes out in October 2008.

For more about the art and science of paper engineering, check out this list of how-to books on Robert Sabuda’s website. And for you teachers, here are some general tips on popups in the classroom, and here is more from Sabuda and Reinhart on classroom use, from the early days of their collaboration.

On Tuesday night, First Book had the incredible pleasure of attending the third annual Carle Honors event, held at the University Club in New York City!

The Carle Honors, sponsored by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, is a unique set of awards designed to recognize four distinct forms of creative vision and long-term dedication to the art of the picture book and its vital role in supporting art appreciation, early literacy, and critical thinking. This year’s amazing list of honorees included Maurice Sendak (Artist), Vanita and Jim Oelschlager (Angels), Susan Hirschman (Mentor), and Jim Trelease (Bridge).

And what an amazing evening it was!  Everywhere one looked, there was an author or illustrator standing nearby – people like Chris Van Allsburg, Jon Scieszka, Rosemary Wells, Eric Carle, Kevin Henkes, Ashley Bryan, Matthew Reinhart, Robert Sabuda, Leonard Marcus, and Lois Ehlert, just to name a few in attendance. It was incredible to encounter so many talented people gathered all in one room!

In celebration of 2008’s Carle Honors recipients, First Book is happy to announce that we will be donating 5,000 new books to children in need in New York and Western Massachusetts. We’d also like to take a moment to thank our wonderful friends at the Carle, especially Museum Director Nick Clark, Assistant Director Rebecca Goggins and Board Member Leonard S. Marcus for their amazing support of First Book’s mission and for continuing to help bring the magic of books to children everywhere!

NEW JERSEY! The Garden State, The Clam State, The Pathway of Revolution and the lesser known Switzerland of America! Last Monday, three of my First Book colleagues and I traveled north along Interstate 95 to New Jersey, where we experienced many of the state’s nicknames and helped to further the “The Pathway of Revolution” by distributing more than 200,000 new books throughout the Garden State and beyond.

Although we were only there for a short time, we were able to distribute popular books such as Movable Mother Goose by Robert Sabuda and Nature Science by award-winning authors Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone to over 100 First Book Recipient Groups. Of those groups, more than 20 organizations were able to pick their books up in North Brunswick, New Jersey thanks to the generous donation of warehouse space by Feed the Children, while the remaining groups will have their books shipped right to their programs.

Looking around an empty warehouse after two long days of hard work, it’s hard to believe that the 200,000 books that filled the same space just a few days earlier have been given to groups all around the United States. This change is always humbling, exciting and reminds us that without the tremendous support of our partners – Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Sterling Publishing Company, the Feed the Children warehouse and numerous KPMG volunteers and their families – we wouldn’t have been able to make such a large impact!