ABRACADABRA

French graphic designer Marion Bataille's ABC3D, a movable ABC Book, is due out in October 2008. The promotional video is set to the New Orleans-born Boswell Sisters' "Roll On, Mississippi, Roll On." What is it about movable books? Rufus Butler Seder's Gallop! is another historically-minded contemporary movable, influenced by the animal locomotion photography of Eadweard Muybridge. But perhaps the greatest "paper engineer" was German children's book designer Lothar Meggendorfer, whose International Circus is one of the most impressive panorama books ever created. In many of his educational children's books, Meggendorfer employed spiraled copper wires to promote easy movement of multiple actions from a single tab pull. Samples of his die-cut movable pieces and tab components are held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Special Collections Department. For those interested in panorama books with an edgy polemic, Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa creates cityscapes focused on failed urbanism.