Peter Pan Pop-Up Book

Received this book new from The Book Guys (a link from the store.com). It arrived very well-packed and the book was sealed for protection. On opening the front cover of the book I was amazed at the attention to detail in the pop-up art! On each page, as well as the story pages, there are beautiful pop-ups to charge the imagination of little people. This was a gift for a 4-year old. He loves it and with each turning of a page he says, "Oh cool!." This isn't just "a book" - it's art!

What a fantastic engaging telling of this story! My son will soon be 5 and couldn't wait to have me read ALL of this book to him over several consecutive bedtimes. He loved seeing the pictures unfold and I think the 3-D element really turned his imagination on as we were reading the story. We will be buying more of these from the same illustrator. Absolutely magical. Oh, and now I've got a trove of perfect gifts to draw on for all the birthday parties we go to!

I saw the good reviews by other buyers and decided to order it for my son- i couldn't believe my eyes when i actually received the book! Now it is more a gift for myself than for my son! An absolute treasure.

The story and illustrations are beautiful but the execution isn't there. First, the pop-ups are not made very well so I had to tape and move some of the pop-ups by hand to make them work. Also, I need to be careful with closing the pages since they don't seem to close perfectly without bending the pop-ups. In addition, this book came quite smashed so the pages are not straight. It seems like this book was stored under something heavy for a long time and, with moisture in the air, the pages became curvy and conformed to the extra small books on some of the pages. Lastly, the book came with a bummed up corner due to shipping, I assume. The book wasn't wrapped properly to prevent this. I'm disappointed. This is the first review I have written EVER for an the store product. Bummer.

My niece loves this book! The illustrations are so vivid and it has so much content, you can go back to it like chapters or abridged versions if you are reading to a toddler. The architecture of the pages is beyond me! The pop-ups are at angles I've never seen before. A unique book that will last a long time if taken care of properly.

I love Robert Sabuda books, his pop-ups are unparalleled. Forget the story (which is very good, btw), all you want to do is make the pictures pop-up over and over. The one of Hook going down the tree trunk into Peter Pan's lair is my favorite. Highly recommend, especially for the $10 I paid for it.

This book is absolutely beautiful! Everyone that has seen it is impressed by it's pop-up illustrations!

The only down side, is that the print is quite small which makes reading it in a darker room difficult.

Awful, I love Robert Sabuda but the condiotion of the book when it reached me inexcusable, pieces were sticking out of the sides over half the pages were torn or damaged, the cover even had tears, I tried to return it or see what I could do about getting another one and the company never responded, I only got an automated email saying they would get back to me. Extremely disappointed

Oh, the cleverness of this book. It creates a fanciful world of its own. It would be a treasure for anyone to own, young or old. Especially for those who refuse to grow up.

Each of the six page spreads has an amazing pop-up in the center as well as a collection of smaller pages--each with more pop-ups--that tell the story of Peter Pan. Altogether there are 28 pop-ups. It's an awfully big adventure.

The first spread is a tour de force, the nighttime cityscape of London from above. You have to look twice, but the swirling clouds hide mermaids, an Indian princess, Mr. Smee and Captain Hook. The moon shows Peter's young profile. It's stunning, and moving. Imagination and adventure are literally tucked in the clouds.

The book itself is a full two-and-a-half inches thick, and constructed with super-heavy-duty paper. With a bit of care it will last many many years. The full-color artwork is loose and expressive, with bold black outlines and an almost woodcut style. The dreamy mood it evokes fits the story's flights of imagination.

Delightful details are everywhere. On the mermaid page the scales and a mirror are metallic silver. The pop-up of the crocodile who finally eats Captain Hook has a silver hook deep in its throat. The pirate ship unfurls to become longer than the book itself.

Other pop-up gems include:
600 Black Spots: A Pop-up Book for Children of All Ages
Birthday Bugs: A Pop-up Party
Blue 2: A Pop-up Book for Children of All Ages
Horton Hears a Who Pop-up!
One Red Dot: A Pop-Up Book for Children of All Ages

Thank you Sara for introducing me to this fantastic artist and engineer.

He is astonishing and I am so glad, at 66, to meet someone who indulges all my grown up childishness. This book is a marvel and a wonder. It is astonishingly beautiful to open a page and look down into the depths of a London that is alive and swirling with mystery. The clouds slowly reveal themselves as fragments of all the central characters in the book, almost as if they were actively hiding and exposing themselves in life. The engineering is exquisite to mushroom the mystery as the pages slowly are drawn apart, like a curtain opening to reveal the hidden backdrop of all the action; but this IS the action and it sucks you swirling down into the play.

Each pop-up is worth hours of exploration, and then of course you can read the words and return to the three dimensional art to see what you may have gleaned and what has been added. There is so much to stir your imagination and bring the words alive. The art is alive and rustling and stirring. It creaks and twitters and sways to unseen breezes and magical puffs. Then, oh so clevelry, it becomes its own backdrop to miniature books within the book, each mini-pop-up art evoking new contexts from the main and adding layers of meaning to the whole. This is a man made universe to jump into like a rabbit hole. These are not simple entertaining distractions to a story; they embody the story with a faith and clarity that only the most vivid imagination could create; and then they stimulate that imagination to riot.

London at night from the air has never looked quite so magical before, and Neverland, approached from the sky, appears to rise from a perfect, bucolic beach like a tropical oasis. From Tinkerbell to the mermaids of Marooner's Rock, the beguiling tale of the boy who never wants to grow up is an interactive adventure in pop-up king Robert Sabuda's latest masterpiece. The full-scale, multi-dimensional delights of the fantastical renderings, like my favorite --- Peter Pan flying out of the pages of the book towards the reader --- will keep many youngsters coming back year after year to revisit this gorgeous adaptation of the world-renowned tale.

There is little to complain about here, save the muted color scheme that gives the book an old-fashioned feeling. Perhaps I am too used to the brilliantly vivid colors of the Disney version, but there is something to be said for the palette here and the feeling it represents. As Peter Pan takes Wendy, John and Michael with him on a trip to his homeland to overcome the evil Captain Hook, the pop-ups themselves depict only major plot points --- and then not even the MOST major plot points. Which is another thing I really like about this book --- it doesn't attempt to overdo or remake the most familiar scenes but rather to illustrate other parts of the story that the Disney version skimmed over.

On each page, there is not only the pop-up picture but also a storybook that reads elegantly, like the original prose of J. M. Barrie himself, with smaller, full-color illustrations that help to anchor the pop-ups to the rest of the narrative. Often these pages fold out to reveal additional though smaller pop-up paintings that carry on the story. Although it is expected now that Sabuda's books will always be a gorgeous sight, their attention to the detail of the original tale or text that the pop-ups illustrate is just as original and fascinating as the 3-D artwork.

Sabuda's creations --- whether they be about real-life creatures like sharks and dinosaurs, or great works of literature, from ALICE IN WONDERLAND to THE WIZARD OF OZ --- are a jumping-off point for the original works. But PETER PAN must be appreciated on its own as a great work of art, a moving part of the continuum of this famous adventure from generation to generation. Like Peter Pan himself, the story never grows old and the flight of fancy it depicts lives on in this beautiful volume for the next group of Lost Boys and Girls. It deserves to be in a museum but will find a better home, surely, on your own bookshelf.