The Raven

Who doesn’t love pop-up books? I always got a kick out of them as a kid, and today, while I don’t have the same sense of wonder I had back then, I think I appreciate the skill and imagination that goes into their design even more.

And who doesn’t love Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”? Well, maybe not as many people as love pop-up books. But as I noted in an earlier review, it’s a poem I grew up with. So two childhood favourites came together for me here.

I wasn’t disappointed! There are seven spreads in total here, with the text of the poem concealed behind flaps. I actually took some pictures but when I looked at them they didn’t do the 3-D effect of the designs jumping out from the page justice. They looked flattened.

The art is by David Pelham (the design of the paper work) and Christopher Wormell (the drawing). They work really well together and they’ve chosen moments from the poem that rhyme with the action of the paper models popping up at you. So there’s the opening of a door, or a window, or a hand (to reveal a cameo of that rare and radiant maiden named Lenore). The wings of the raven also open up in a way that in a couple of spreads mimics the action in a sort of visual onomatopoeia.

Another thing I really liked about the art is its range. It goes from the close-up, like the aforementioned cameo, to the super-sized in the book’s final spread of the narrator’s castle. And actually that final spread mixes both, as you’re drawn into the model of the castle to peer deeper into the one room that’s lit, which you can (if you squint hard) peek inside to see the narrator lying on the floor with the shadow of the raven falling over him. Great stuff!

I don’t know how popular pop-up books are these days, or how many are being produced, but if there’s work of this quality being done I hope it’s a form we don’t lose.  You can’t put something like this on an e-reader, that’s for sure.

Graphicalex