Magic picture puzzles for clever children

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Jacqueline Reid-Walsh with Imaan Visram

This long blog concerns my process of writing a label for a Penn State rare books display starting in December. The challenge is to write about an item that you consider one of your “favorite things” for an exhibit called “playing favorites”   We are to follow the rules in “a guide to exhibition Label Writing” and limit our text to 100-150 words per item. We have two prompts “what am i looking at” and “why should I look at it” while keeping in mind that a label “is an invitation to look, a brief encounter, and a bridge to a more meaningful encounter.”

I have chosen to compare two interactive books published in the later 1920’s and early 1930’s in Germany and the US: Das Zauberboot 1929; The Magic Boat, (translated 1935) by Tom Seidman-Freud and Magic Movie Book … (1943) by Tony Sarg, respectively. Each maker was and is a noted moveable book designer for children. Because I discuss two items, I am allowed a few more words but it is a challenge to be explanatory and descriptive and make a persuasive argument to a potential museum viewer!

What connects these books is their ingenious design that invites children to become interactors, instead of simply viewers or players of a book object (Reid-Walsh 2018). Notably, the instructions on how to use the books challenge the child to assume an active role (note 1). With these two books, children are invited to play with perception by using prosthetic devices included with the books. Seidmann-Freud has a simple request to take a small piece of red transparent film from the back of the book and place it over the red and blue colored pictures. Sarg has a more complex task: first to take the red and blue bi-colored “magic glasses” from the front of the book. Then look at the red and blue drawings displayed as if early cinema by moving a projecting volvelle or disc at the side edge of the page. Both sets of illustrations use the same colors and resemble drawn pictures as opposed to polished artworks. The style of the images invites an informal active approach. The implied task is to make sense of the blue and red line drawings. I consider both sets visual media puzzles. Seidmann -Freud specifically calls for “clever children” to go on to “make their own pictures.” Tony Sarg does not describe his child viewers but challenges them to put on the “magic glasses” to discover how they perceive (see blog posts “Pop-Out” and “Magic Pictures“). In both cases the roles of the children are essential for the books’ effects and meanings. I would say they are visual experiments to be solved; I am intrigued by the invitations of these two books to play with perception with red and blue. Underneath is a step-by-step “revealing” of Seidmann-Freud’s book.

Cover of the Magic Boat Book red film in back cover of book

double page spread of pictures

red film over picture making red image disappear red film on paper making child appear to fly red blue glasses, looking through red lens red blue glasses looking through blue lens

I have taken the challenge twice. I used the red paper that effectively transforms the child image into an invisible child. However, I wonder about the blue. I bought some blue transparent paper, but it does not work the same way since the images show through the film.

My ongoing questions are how and why:

How does the age of the material and the ink effect the visual transformations? ie the paper, the film, the tones of the inks on paper.

How does working with the original books versus photocopies effect the transformation?

Is there a difference in perception between the red film on red illustration and the blue film on blue illustration? Does this difference account for the illusion working in the first instance and not working in the second?

Is there a difference in perception between laying colored film directly on top of the paper and looking through the plastic glasses from a distance?

Now what remains is the task of writing 150 coherent words with a catchy title for the labels for these two books that are going on display in a very short time. Exciting, challenging, and daunting!

Note 1: I compare these instructions to early books with interlocutor gestures of fingers directing how to read a book as discussed in The Education of Things 2024, by Elizabeth Hoiem.

Reid-Walsh, J. Interactive Books (2018).

CFP: Journal of Interactive Books

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Cartoon image of a man talking on an old telephone

We are collecting contributions for the next issue of JIB, which will be published in April 2026. The Call for Papers is open to all topics related to both historical and modern interactive books, of historical, artistic, scientific, and educational interest, while also engaging with the most recent and significant experiences in multimedia and artists’ books. Texts submitted for the Articles section should be between 20,000 and 50,000 characters, including spaces and notes. Each contribution must be accompanied by an abstract of 1,500–2,000 characters (including spaces) and three relevant keywords. Contributions submitted for the Reports and Reviews section should not exceed 10,000 characters, including spaces and any notes, and does not include bibliographic references.

Any illustrations, figures, tables or multimedia elements must be numbered and indicated in the text with a special marker (e.g. Fig. 1, Figs. 2-3 do not use “Figs.”), positioned appropriately within the contribution and accompanied by a caption. The editorial staff reserves the right to request the author to send individual images in high definition during the production phase of the article to ensure better graphic rendering.

For submitting proposals you can use the form on the journal’s website.

The deadline is strictly set for January 12, 2026.

For any questions or difficulties during the submission process, you can contact the editorial team at: pop-app@fondazionetancredidibarolo.com.

New Issue of the Journal of Interactive Books

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By Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

Front cover of volume 4 of the Journal of Interactive Books

View Vol. 4 (2025): Journal of Interactive Books at https://jib.pop-app.org/index.php/jib/issue/view/5

Vol. 4 (2025): Journal of Interactive Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57579/10.57579JIB42025

We are pleased to announce the latest issue of the Journal of Interactive Books. An open access annual, it is published in Turin, Italy in Italian and English. The editors are Pompeo Vagliani, Editor-in-Chief (Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo, Turin, Italy), Marta Peiretti (Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo, Turin, Italy), and Eliana Angela Pollone (Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy), Managing Editors, and I am Associate editor. The editorial board is becoming more international-across Europe and the UK with the occasional North American. The good news about this fourth issue is that the journal has been recognized as a top-tier (Class A) Academic Journal. This issue offers an ever-wider range of approaches and perspectives and features contributions ranging from the history of the ancient book to the contemporary era in different media. As well as scholarly articles from several disciplines there is a more informal section of reviews and a new addition “Notes from the Field.”

The table of contents:

Editorial
“A Milestone and a New Challenge: Towards the… POP-APP MUSEUM,”
Pompeo Vagliani, I-IV

Articles

“Raise or turn, follow the story and admire. Flaps and wheels in Italian children’s books in the 1930s and 1940s,” Eliana Angela Pollone, 1-17

“Schaller & Kirn: A Short History and List of Movable Books,” Jo Tisinger, 18-31

“An Orchestrated Antique: Paddington’s Pop-Up Book Adventure Through Paper, Pixels, and Plastic,” Jodie Coates, 32-51

“Playful Science: Games, Didactic Resources, and Interactive Books,” Pompeo Vagliani, 52-61

“Musicae practicae. Books with Movable Devices in Music Dissemination: A Research Project (Part I),” Roberta De Piccoli, Pompeo Vagliani, 62-72

Reviews

“Notes from the field, Feb 21, 2025,” Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, 73-75

“Kubasta: Magic of Vojtech Kubasta’s Pop-up Books in the Collection of Mauro Pierluigi,” Maria Simonella, 76-77

“Ma contribution pour faire connaître le monde des livres animés,” Patrik Lecoq, 78

“Interactive books as an interdisciplinary pedagogic tool: The hands-on experience with Design and Visual Communication students,” Paola Fagnola, 79-82

Enjoy the variety of pieces in Italian, English and French – and please consider submitting articles based on your own research and practice with interactive books (material and digital)!

 

 

What can you do with a piece of string? (part 3): String as an enabling device. String across the gutters

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By Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

In this post, I discuss another use of string in movable books, here a book called Seaside Fun (1892) published by Dean and Son as part of the “model” book series. These books are a combination of conventional picture book with experiments with mobile three-dimensional effects through using string to slightly raise an illustration or part of an illustration on a page or double page spreads. I have read about this series in rare book catalogues, rare book dealer descriptions, and in some academic research (see note 1 below). Experiencing the book firsthand and the impressive effects is completely different. I had the pleasure of engaging with the book in February at Cambridge University Library in the rare books collection.Cover of Seaside Fun showing two people on an embankment looking at a boat on the water

The instructions for the interactor are precise and need to be followed in order. Placed above the preamble, they are in small red caps with bolded parts: “Before Opening Each Page Place Thumb Where Marked / Hold Firmly and Open Wide.”Interior page of the book with book operation instructions in the upper margin

When an interactor carefully engages with the book, you enable the sequence of motions that include both three-dimensional movement of the entire illustration and movement within part of the raised illustration. I have included a set of photographs that show both the top of the pages and the supports underneath. The choice of the sailing boat where sailors activate the sails is most effective, since in a way an interactor is doing the same on the miniature boat.

Book interior showing the first stage of interactivityInterior of book showing next stage of interactivityInterior of book with two page spread showing interaction with the sailboatInterior of the book showing the final stage of the sails and sailboat

Looking closely at the images we can see how the pale string appears across the gutter in the middle of the book. As Blair Whitton notes, the flat parts are “activated by horizontal strings from page to page that stretch and lift the sails up when each page is fully opened” (p. 56, illus. 9). The entry on “Dean and Son and Other Early Examples of Movables” on the University of Virginia rare books website states that the movement relies “on the use of strings that link the parts, creating a tension that pulls the images into place” (see note 2 below).

If we imagine the set of photos as a short film clip, we can appreciate the sophisticated design and how an implied child interactor has the power to set the sequence in motion. It strikes me as a kind of stop motion pre cinema animation. At the same time, the fragility of the materials and the construction of the movable plates are apparent and we are reminded off the advice in the introductory instructions. Significantly, the active role of the interactor is depicted in the paratext by the large image of a thumb in the outer margins of the pages showing where to place the thumbs to set the page(s) in action. This is perhaps a parody of previous educational material for children that employed the early modern technique of what Elizabeth Hoiem called the “interlocutor gesture” (p. 39). Here, in terms of scale this presents the child as a giant among the miniature images reinforcing a sense of omnipotence when interacting with the moveable book.

Note 1:

For further information, please consult the Vintage Pop-Up Books catalog description; these are pertinent extracts:

A Visit to the Country: with surprise model pictures – also containing movables for Seaside Fun
(No. 4, in Dean’s Surprise Model Books)
Published London: Dean & Son, 160A, Fleet Street, [ca. 1892]
By Arthur Penuel and E. Gourley.

Quarter blue cloth and illustrated paper over boards – [10] p. : col. ill. ; 31 cm. – 11 13/16 x 8 7/16 (30 x 21.5 x 0.5 cm)

The copy described has Seaside Fun bound with A Visit to the Country, with both books “complete with the delicate strings intact.”

Pop-ups are operated with strings that lift objects to create a sense of depth and roundness as well as movement. Thin barely visible stings pull the images into place. There are two single page pop-ups and one double spread pop-up in the center. Followed by Seaside Fun also containing two single page pop-ups and one double spread pop-up in the center

The description cites the Opies:

According to Iona and Peter Opie: “The Surprise Model books are the “’most ambitious and fragile of nineteenth century pop-up books”…“The effect of solidity was attempted by the use of laterally attached cotton threads which pulled in the sides of the chief feature to make it rounded”

Indeed, with the thin thread and unique mechanism of action, Dean knew how fragile their surprise picture books were. At the top of the page we are instructed: ‘BEFORE OPENING EACH PAGE PLACE THUMBS WHERE MARKED, HOLD FIRMLY AND OPEN WIDE’. Small drawings of thumbs are on each side of each movable.

We found old publishers ads saying “Upon opening any page in these, books, the pictures, by an ingenious arrangement, open, as if by magic, into model relief; and upon the book being closed, or the page turned, become perfectly flat again.”

Note 2:

In Hannah Field in Playing with the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader discusses Dean and Son’s model books she states: “The convex pop-up technique in Dean’s Surprise Model series may be used to produce dramatic effects, such as a train curving across the page opening (see Figure 1.6). Equally, though, it might present the gentler curve of a dovecote seen on a family trip to the country. Sometimes, glamour and the mundane combine” (p. 119-20).

Works Cited

Field, Hannah. Playing with the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader. University of Minnesota Press. 2019

Hoiem, Elizabeth Massa. The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children’s Literature, 1762-1860. University of Massachusetts Press, 2024.

Whitton, Blair. Paper Toys of the World. Hobby House Press, 1986.

What can you do with a piece of string? (part 2)

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By Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

Enabling Device

In the first part of this mini-series, I explored the question “what can you do with a piece of string” in terms of being a simple form of pull-tab. Lifting or pulling the string easily enables movement in one direction but the reverse motion is not propelled by the string but is more a falling or pulling back. The examples I explored were both 19th century ones directed to a children’s market.  Because I am interested in antecedents I wondered about the use of string as an enabling device in earlier movable books. The famous Astronomicum Caesareum (1540) came to mind with the many intricate threads attached to the volvelles.

Astronomical volvelle with string

Recently some Italian scholars like Giovani Crupi, Pompeo Vagliani, and Eliana Pollone have analyzed the volvelles as a forerunner of modern movable books. As Pollone (2025) states volvelles are one of the earliest mechanisms of paper-engineered book animation, with origins dating back to the medieval manuscript tradition and a long history of supporting learning in technical and scientific books intended for adult readers and students of various ages (Pollone, 2; note 1)

Here what I want to explore is the role of the strings or threads attached to the volvelles and whether they could be considered enabling devices. Working with a facsimile housed at Penn State University, one volume is the reproduction of the book while the second contains scholarly commentary. Consulting the second volume of the facsimile set I read the that “the rotatable cardboard discs, included in this book, could easily be set with the aid of threads attached to them” (2: 42). Later the commentary states regarding an astronomical problem that “[a] thread with a bead can be stretched taut from the centre” (2: 60). Gianfranco Crupi (2016) in “‘Mirabili visioni’: from movable books to movable texts” notes that the silk strings provided a way to accurately determine the positions of the planets and other celestial phenomena. There could be as many as “six rotatable dials, representing central, eccentric, and epicyclical shifts, to harmonize with the Ptolemaic theory of stellar movements, and include up to three silk threads representing ‘fiducial’ lines of reference” (Crupi, 16). Further, “[t]iny pearls attached to the silk threads initially served as sliding indicators on some of the non-rotating circular charts” (Helfand 2002, cited in Crupi, 16).

I wondered how the setting of the thread was done by the interactor since this involved intricate detailed positioning of the thread (s) on multiple discs.  For example, in the article “Nebbia di fili”: paper instruments for practical astronomy (1474-1613)” by Giorgio Strano from the Museo Galileo: Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence, Strano describes the exactitude of the placement of the volvelles and the strings in order to make intricate calculations. The note reads: “Two larger volvelles are used to position the deferent eccentric circumference in relation to the Earth; the thread coming from point E on the other hand is used to position the epicycle in relation to the equant circumference. Crossing over the two threads coming from the Earth V and from the centre of the epicycle F, the apparent position of the planet is intercepted along the zodiac” (Strano, 90).

Image of the volvelle with the strings

Based on this application, I wondered where and how the strings were attached to the volvelles.  Examining the facsimile, I realized the threads are attached to the centre of the discs, not at a periphery. The threads were attached to the substrate with a knot or stitch and formed the fulcrum or central axis of the volvelles. Michelle Gravelle, Anah Mustapha, and Coralee Leroux observe that usually the components bear text or illustrations and are anchored to the page with string. They observe that this invention of Matthew Paris’s “allowed readers to turn the disk and align it with their bodies, thus making it easier to read the dates” (Note 2).

Reading this I wondered how the readers turn the disc; do they hold onto the edge? Looking at the facsimile I noticed that on occasion there is a paper tab protruding from the side of some discs.

Touching the threads, and the multiple discs and turning over the pages I realized that the strings create a silky textured effect on top of the disc and that the layers of discs served to mask the sewing of the thread into the thick paper.

When only a single disc, the knot or stitch can be felt more than seen on the reverse of the paper sheet. Perhaps this opaque design served to further enhance the majesty and mystery of the large-scale images.

At the same time some of the functional threads or strings have beads and are beautiful objects when set against the elaborate volvelles. Were they also subjects of contemplation and meditation?

My questions here concern how widespread was the knowledge of these intricate instruments that required strings to be fully functional?  Did these devices continue to be included in later editions? We know that the practice of using volvelles as interactive educational devices continued throughout the centuries (see Vagliani 2025) but the presence of strings is not apparent.

My next question concerns the use and possible misuse of the strings. In terms of the design, did the arrangement of the strings enable other uses? Here I refer to Suzanne Karr Schmitt’s book Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life (2011) where she discusses how some viewers interacted with prints in nontraditional ways that could be considered “misuse” or “abuse” (Karr Schmitt, 11).

I am not referring to her specific context which involves explicit censorship or blasphemy where users physically damaged the prints or marked margins and images with critical words and graphical additions. I am not a specialist, but I do not know of any volume with volvelles that have been altered in such a way. Rather, I am speculating that the beautiful strings that had to be laid out on top of the volvelles by the interactor invited other ways of engaging with them apart from the intended use. One idea I had and dismissed was whether you could use the strings to move the volvelle, but this is difficult to achieve and damages the device. Rather according to Valiani and Crupi there were occasional tabs affixed to the periphery of the volvelles. I am still pondering possible uses of string in later volvelles such as attaching it to the periphery to activate the disc. Could this be a new sub project?

 

Note 1: In note 27 Pollone cites Rubin about terminology. In the absence of a standardized vocabulary, the terms dischi mobili (“wheels”) and volvelle are often confusing and sometimes used interchangeably. The distinction, as adopted here, can be outlined as follows: volvelle refers to those mechanisms—typically associated with combinatory systems—composed of “rotating paper or membrane discs, shaped and overlapping and fixed to the page with one or more pins, allowing each disc to be independently rotated around its axis” (Crupi 2019b, 2); dischi mobili (or “wheels”), on the other hand, may refer either to the individual rotating components of a volvelle, or to specific mechanisms—historically more recent—consisting of: “An illustrated disc of paper or cardstock sandwiched between two adjoining pages and secured by a paper disc or metal grommet. Die-cut holes in the top page allow for the illustrations drawn around the wheel to show through the holes” (Rubin 2023, 101).

Note 2: See also Daniel K. Connolly, “Imagined Pilgrimage in the Itinerary Maps of Matthew Paris,” Art Bulletin 81, no. 4 (December 1999), 611.

Works cited

Crupi, Gianfranco. 2016. “‘Mirabili visioni’: From Movable Books to Movable Text.” JLIS.It 7 (1):25-87.

Gravelle, Michelle, Anah Mustapha, and Coralee Leroux. “Volvelles.” In Archbook https://drc.usask.ca/projects/archbook/volvelles.php. Accessed April 20, 2025.

Helfand, Jessica. 2002. Reinventing the Wheel. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Karr Schmitt, Suzanne with Kimberly Nichols. 2011. Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Pollone, Eliana. “Raise or Turn, Follow the Story and Admire Flaps and wheels in Italian Children’s Books of the 1930s and 1940s.” JIB 4. 2025 pp. 1-17, note 27

Strano, Giorgio. 2019. “Nebbia di fili: paper instruments for practical astronomy (1474-1613)” in Pop-app: science, art and play in the history of movable books from paper to apps. Ed. Giovani Crupi and Pompeo Vagliani. 87-97. Turin: Tancredi di Barolo Foundation.

Vagliani, Pompeo. “Playful Science: Games, Didactic Resources, and Interactive Books.” JIB 4. 2025 pp. 52-61.