Mommy?

This is a pop-up book written by Maurice Sendak one his last collaborations with Arthur Yorinks, before he died. Pop-up engineering by brilliant Matthew Reinhart. There is another video of the three working together. A treasure, no doubt, for Reinhart.

A boy in his pajamas looks for his mommy and encounters monsters along the way. Each monster is accidentally tripped by the encounter with the boy until the last page where all the monsters are brought together in a chaotic pop-up tour de force at the moment the boy finds his mommy who turns out to be a bride of Frankenstein type.

The book is complex with layered pop-up devices. While the idea of introducing individuals and bringing them together at the end has universal application. The same idea is used for the pop-up book, Welcome to the Neighborwood that I bought just now where individual woodland species are described to children and the final pop-up shows all the species together. That book was shown here already and it is simple in pop-up mechanics and art and design. But there are words. Whole paragraphs. So, it's a children's book to read with simple pop-up enhancement.

The double doors that start off the book Mommy? took me twenty prototypes to figure out for the Angry Monkey pop-up card. By the end I returned to an earlier prototype and I didn't realize the art behind the doors is important as the doors themselves but I was too worn out and sick of the thing by then to draw an interior. The joke is, a couple on the sidewalk passes the doors. The girl says to the boy, "It's scientific fact that monkeys cannot turn a doorknob to open a door." The next page is a monkey flinging open the doors screaming, "Lies!" It was a cartoon that a British boy drew that put me in stitches. I copied his monkey. His arms are attached to the doors. The doors fling open his arms, not his arms fling the doors, but it looks like the same thing. I gave the card to my doctor and his nurse claimed it for herself. It was addressed to him, and she thanked me for sending her such a ridiculous laughable card. She was laughing when she thanked me.

Look how rich the first page is. A strip underneath the artwork is attached to the right side near the central fold that pulls across the whole left side when the card opens but you cannot see any of that One door opens sympathetic to the card opening. The opposite door is tugged with an attachment that transfers energy the opposite direction. Stone steps form under the doors when the card is opened.

Conversely, a V mechanism is set at a steep angle so one side is parallel with the central fold and instead of flipping both sides up it flips up only one side behind artwork and attached to new artwork so the mad science on the table appears to expand. But there are two such mechanisms along the central fold operating in opposite directions so the mad science art content attached to them  top and bottom behind the original art content expands in both directions up and down. The right side page edge is the center fold for another internal card concealing art content and pop-up mechanisms. It operates as a separate card while its art contributes to the dungeon science lab composition. When opened the scientist spreads. At the same time a similar mechanism behind the artwork drops a vampire to appear in the opening of the drawn fireplace upside down like a bat. So, we have the clever storytelling of Sendak, the charming artwork Yorinks and the pop-up éclat of Reinhart. Sendak and Yorinks cannot do pop-ups, and Reinhart is not any good at story telling and poor at art. Together the three make one big fat genius. Truly, the best of the best. And each page shows this same excellence.

This book is so cheap on Amazon it makes me ill. I paid over twice this and I considered it a bargain. I should buy half a dozen copies and give them away. I just might do that.

Several videos of this book on YouTube to show you. I'll have you know that I spared you the video of the woman showing off her deplorable lime green fingernails that she uses to scratch the surface of the book. Why she would do that, show off those disgusting fingernails and emphasize their annoyance in fingernails on chalkboard style, is beyond me. I hated her in two seconds flat and got out of there fast as I could.  I picked this video because a child is enjoying it. When little kids read it just blows my mind. They're so precious. And smart.