BooksmART: Robert Sabuda

Hailed as the “Prince of Pop-Ups,” Robert Sabuda orchestrates major feats of paper engineering in his quest to bring to life literary classics in a new way. Growing up in Michigan as the son of a mason and carpenter, Sabuda aspired to be an artist at a young age; he learned (and perhaps inherited) the ability to create with his hands. He says of his childhood, “I spent hours, days, and weeks drawing, painting, cutting, and gluing. My bedroom was a constant whirlwind of pencil shavings, drippy paint brushes and paper scraps. My mother’s pleas of ‘when are you going to clean up this mess?!’ went unanswered.” Robert created magical worlds by making scenery and backdrops for his mother’s dance school recitals and covered his teachers’ bulletin boards with cut-paper collages. His mother gave him discarded manila file folders from Ford Motor Company, where she worked during the day; this rejected material ignited his imagination to make pop-ups. Sabuda attended Pratt Institute in New York City to study art. During his junior year, he had an internship at Dial Books for Young Readers, where he learned how a children’s book is created. His innovative techniques include replicating handmade Egyptian papyrus for his book Tutankhamun’s Gift and creating paintings that resembled stained glass for Arthur and the Sword. Booklist raved about his Alice in Wonderland, saying, “Sabuda’s pop-ups gracefully unfurl—and then collapse upon themselves with jaw-dropping ease that leaves one flipping the pages back and forth in amazement.” Sabuda lives and works in New York City in a studio that he shares with partner Matthew Reinhart, who collaborates with him on many best-selling pop-up series, such as Encyclopedia Prehistorica and Encyclopedia Mythologica: Fairies and Magical Creatures.