Here’s a list of my favorite pop-up books. I’ve grouped them in general topics, but they often have overlaps.
How-Tos
Pop-Up Design and Paper Mechanics: How to Make Folding Paper Sculpture
by Duncan Birmingham
For me this is the book on pop-up engineering and I can not recommend it enough. It covers almost every pop-up mechanism I’ve seen in a well-organized fashion, with clear, color photographs and plenty of examples. Perhaps a bit too technical for some, I enjoy his comments on the theory behind the mechanism, and how adjusting one angle affects another. This is his revised version of his earlier book below.
The last section of the book has patterns for 14 projects to build that cover many of the techniques.
In this blog I will refer to the mechanism with the numbers from this book. For example, Foundation Shape 7, would be FS7 (parallelogram). See the terminology page for details.
Pop Up!: A Manual of Paper Mechanisms
by Duncan Birmingham
This is the first Birmingham book, which I also recommend if you can find it. Smaller, and with black-and-white illustrations, it has 120 different mechanisms, some with several variations.
As an aspiring paper engineer, I created every one of the pop-ups of this book on 5½” x 4¼” (quarter of a sheet of letter) paper.
The Elements of Pop-Up
by James Diaz, David A. Carter
No longer in print, this one is interesting in that it is itself a pop-up book with examples of many mechanisms. Each little pop-up has a paragraph explaining it with the pop-up itself annotated with notes about angles and dimensions. Other mechanisms such as pull tabs and wheels are also covered. You get to see all the details of a mechanism from cut outs, or being able to see the back of it. In addition to the working samples and directions, you can get the diagrams for all the mechanisms from David Carter’s site
The Complexities of Pop-Up
by James Diaz, David A. Carter
This is a follow-up to Elements of Pop-Up, which they take the basic mechanisms from that book and show how to combine them to make more complex ones. Like the other book, it is a pop-up book itself with a small pop-up of each mechanism they show. And like the previous book, all the diagrams are available online. Published by PopositionPress
The Pop-Up Book: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating Over 100 Original Paper Projects
by Paul Jackson
This was my first adult book on pop-ups. It’s a great book for learning the various techniques about pop-ups, which I did by doing all his designs on index cards (tiny 2½” x 1¾”).
The first section covers one-piece techniques using one sheet of paper and cutting it. Then multi-piece techniques with gluing on other pieces. Finally a section full of examples of designing pop-ups with directions for building them, as well as many examples of professional pop-ups.
Cut and Fold Techniques for Pop-Up Designs
by Paul Jackson
This is one of a series of four books about folding paper by Paul Jackson. As the name suggests, this only covers cutting and folding. No gluing involved here. It is essentially a more detailed and technical discussion of the first section of the earlier work.
Creative Pop-Up: A History And Project Book: A Fascinating Introduction To Paper Engineering, With 50 Step-By-Step Folds And Projects
by Trish Phillips, Ann Montanaro
As the title suggests, this has 50 well-thought out projects of varying difficulty. It also has a great section about the history or pop-ups.
New Pop-Up Paper Projects
by Paul Johnson
This is by Paul Johnson, not to be confused with Paul Jackson mentioned above. This book is targeted at teachers and has many, many different examples of pop-ups, most of which are designed by school children. Don’t let that fool you into thinking this is a trivial book. He covers all the basic pop-up mechanism and then gets into some pretty interesting and advanced variations. Most of the illustrations, are small and hand-drawn, which can make them less clear than a photograph, or mechanically drawn images.
How to Make Super Pop-Ups
by Joan Irvine (Author), Linda Hendry (Illustrator)
This is the book that started it all. Once at the library with Howard Jr., I was browsing the shelves and found this book, checked it out, and started making pop-ups. Since I enjoyed it so much, I sought out books in the taller childrens’1 section and really got going with Paul Jackson’s pop-up book
Paper Engineering for Pop-up Books and Cards
by Mark Hiner
This is a fun little book of 48 pages and includes ten of the most essential pop-up mechanisms. It has clear directions for making each one with full-size patterns on heavy paper to cut out, if you so desire.
Up-Pops: Paper Engineering With Elastic Bands
by Mark Hiner
This is a companion to Mark’s other book above. This covers what he calls “up-pops” which are pop-ups that are powered not by a page opening, but by a rubber band to “pop” them from flat to 3D instantly. He has ten mechanisms from cube and pyramid to more exotic shapes. Like the other book, the steps are clear and include patterns on extra heavy paper to cut and build. I still have a box with all ten built, many with rubber bands that are still working.
I used his cube pattern in an April 2022 “up-pop”.
Kirigami: The Art of 3-dimensional Paper Cutting
by Laura Badalucco
This could go in the Origami Architecture section since OA is Kirigami (cutting and folding only, no pasting on). This book has many examples of Kirigami from abstract, to architecture, to figurative. You will see similar models in the Ondori books by Nakazawa, and Chatani listed below.
Cards
Best Greeting Cards
by Keiko Nakazawa
Ondori publishes many good pop-up books, and this one has many greeting card ideas. Included are many interesting 180° and 90° cards, and more interestingly a 360° design and many 0° designs. The 360° is a dice cube that forms when you open the card all the way so the front and back touch. This and Chantani’s book below are the only books I’ve found with the 0° designs. I’ve made a couple of my own, including the 2021 Christmas card, which I blogged about.
Cards that Pop Up, Flip & Slide
by Michael Jacobs
This book has many interesting card designs, many of which are pop-ups. Although it does not include patterns, the directions are clear enough for you to create some great cards. I have used this book for ideas on several of my cards.
Origami Architecture
Great American Buildings: Origami Cutouts of Everybody’s Favorite Landmarks
by Masahiro Chatani, Keiko Nakazawa
A large format book that includes 25 OA designs of American buildings including full-sized patterns on card stock. Like The Paper Architect this has a description and history of each building.
Paper Magic: Pop-Up Paper Craft
by Masahiro Chatani
Another Ondori publication. I try to get all of Masahiro Chatani’s books. They have many great examples of OA, plus many interesting designs. It includes patterns for all the designs.
Pop-Up Origamic Architecture
by Masahiro Chatani
Similar to the book above, but with different patterns. This has some 0° designs in it.
Pop-Up Greeting Cards: A Creative Personal Touch for Every Occasion
by Masahiro Chatani
Similar to the books above. The title suggests that it’s geared toward cards, but it has many buildings and other topics. As usual, all the patterns are included.
Pattern Sheets of Origamic Architecture
by Masahiro Chatani
In Japanese, this book has 77 building OA designs that Masahiro Chatani created and sent to the architect of the actual building. He got most of them signed. The book contains all the designs, with many printed larger on cardstock.
The Paper Architect: Fold-it-yourself Buildings and Structures with 20 Ready-to-Use Templates
by Marivi Garrido, Ingrid Siliakus, Joyce Aysta
This book has full-size patterns for 20 well-known architectural wonders of the world from the Colosseum in Rome to the London Eye. These ladies are amazing and the patterns included will keep you busy for a while. Each model has a page describing the history of the structure, and another clearly illustrated page about assembling the pop-up.
Pop-up Books
These are some of my favorite pop-up books that have great examples of mechanisms. Anything by these authors is worth getting.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation
by Lewis Carroll (Author), Robert Sabuda (Illustrator)
One Red Dot
by David A Carter
600 Black Spots
Blue 2
by David A Carter
ABC3D
by Marion Bataille
This is a tour de force of ABCs. Each spread has one or two letters that pop up different ways. There are some very clever mechanisms in this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Her successor, 10, is (as you can imagine) the numbers 1 to 10, but is not nearly the calibre of ABC3D.
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Adult ↩