Children’s Literary Salon: Pop-Up Edition

Party at my place this Saturday.  I’ll bring the chairs, you bring yourselves.  Here’s the official announcement:

Children’s Literary Salon – The Movable Book: Creating Pop-Ups for the Juvenile Audience

Where: NYPL, The Children’s Center at 42nd Street, 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, Room 84 on the Ground Floor

When: Saturday, March 5th at 2:00 p.m.

Continuing our conversations on those children’s books that rarely get their due, join pop-up creators and artists Kyle Olmon and Sam Ita in a conversation about what the creation of a pop-up book really entails. We will examine everything from the rudimentary mechanics, to the problems, to the reception of books that make a concentrated effort to leap off the page.

Born in 1978, Sam Ita grew up in a small town near the Canadian border. He studied graphic design at Pratt Institute. After working as a petticab driver and luggage salesman, Sam eventually answered a classified ad in the Village Voice, which led to his first job as a “paper engineer.” He has since applied his unique abilities to such fields as publishing, advertising, and toy design. His first book; A Comic / Pop Up Book adaptation of Moby Dick was officially selected for Illinois First Lady, Patricia Blagojevich’s Reading Club. He currently lives and works in Queens.

Kyle Olmon was born outside Chicago, Illinois into an artistic household. He studied painting and art history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a bookmaking course he took as an exchange student in Australia, Olmon was reintroduced to the world of pop-up books. He began to teach himself everything there was to know about how to make pop-ups. He moved to Santa Fe to study under Andrew Baron, a paper engineer who taught him the intricacies of movable book production. Andrew invited Olmon to participate in the creation of a book titled Celebration, honoring the tenth anniversary of the Movable Book Society. He now serves as a board member for the Society. In 2004, Olmon moved to New York where be quickly became the lead designer in the studios of world renown pop-up artists, Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart. It was around this time that he began teaching a unique college course on paper engineering at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Olmon’s first book, Castle: Medieval Days and Knights, was released in 2006 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. His follow-up book, Baby Signs, creatively combined paper engineering and American Sign Language to teach pre-verbal children how to communicate with adults. In addition to his commercial successes, Olmon continues to show his pop-up creations in galleries and exhibitions around the world. To this day, Olmon can still be found at his drafting table, devising new ways for paper to defy gravity and peoples’ expectations.

This event will take place in the Children’s Center (Room 84).  This program is for adults only.

Read Kyle Olmon’s blog post on the event as well.  See you there!

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