Books in Toyland

Many adults do not consider some of the most popular books for children worthy to be called books at all. Even critics of children's literature often feel uncomfortable when confronted with books that depart from the traditional format of print on paper: how can we judge a book with parts that move or pictures that dissolve from one scene to another? The most immediate response is to condemn the entire lot as non-books, as Iona and Peter Opie did when they wrote,

For a suprisingly long time now there have been firms, large and small, particularly firms catering for the young, who have sought to put life into their books by the crudest of all possible means, by representing life mechanically. Their artists may not be able to depict movement, so the figures in their pictures are made to move in reality; they may not be able to convey the illusion of depth, so they produce pictures that are actually three-dimensions; they may be incapable of portraying a cow mooing, so a mooing noise is in fact contrived.

(61)

But one cannot dismiss lightly a category of books which has existed for centuries and which enjoys continued popularity. To give just one example, Eric Hill's series about Spot, a set of books with flaps that lift to reveal hidden characters, is phenomenally successful. As Roback reveals, the books, which have sold over seven million copies in less than ten years, have been translated into forty-five languages (116).

While Eric Hill has obviously struck a responsive chord with contemporary book purchasers, his use of flaps that lift to reveal hidden illustrations is certainly not an innovation. Although it is probably impossible to date precisely when books with movable parts were first produced, they existed as long ago as the sixteenth century. Iona and Peter Opie note that

In the Astronomicum Caesareum of Petrus Apianus, published at Ingolstadt in 1540, is an assemblage of coloured movable parts with which the position of Mars can be determined at any given time. In Jacques Bassantin's Astronomique discours, printed at Lyons in 1557, an intricate circular diagram with moving parts is provided 'pour trouuer le vray lieu de Venue au Zodiaque'. And in Gallucci's Coelestium Corporum, produced in Venice in 1603, no fewer than fifty-one diagrams are to be found with volvelles and movable pointers, an abundance that puts to shame some present-day novelty books.

(62)

While these devices were fashioned to aid in scientific study, they indicate that techniques to make movable books have existed for several hundred years.

The early history of novelty books really begins in the mid-eighteenth century with Robert Sayers' production of harlequinades in London around 1760. These books consisted of a single sheet of paper folded perpendicularly into four. "Hinged to the head and foot of each fold was the picture, cut through horizontally across the centre to make two flaps that could be opened up or downwards." As the story progressed, the reader was instructed to turn a flap up or down, thereby changing the illustration. According to Quayle, these "turn-up" books, as they were popularly called, "soon became a craze with young people. By the turn of the century there were scores of titles to choose from" (212).

The nineteenth century brought other formats. The harlequinade developed into the Juvenile Drama, a printed toy in sheet form. Young people could construct scenery, flats, drop scenes, and other parts of miniature theatres. The earliest dated sheets that survive are from 1811, but according to Scarfe, by 1830, over fifty publishers advertised juvenile drama sheets (5).

A related book/toy was the paper doll book, invented by S. & J. Fuller in 1810.

Instead of pictures the stories, always in rhyme, had a series of loosely inserted cut-out figures, coloured by hand. These represented the hero and heroine of the story in a number of different costumes, each figure having a space cut out for the head, which was supplied separately, and fitted all the figures by means of a pointed tag which was slipped into a paper pocket behind the figure...