From September 28 to October 1, the Movable Book Society held its biannual conference in Cleveland USA. In a much-appreciated hybrid mode, I attended the Saturday presentations virtually. The engaging presentations provided insight into this wide-ranging group. The first three were pedagogical. Doctoral Student Jodie Coates presented her dissertation “Paper-Engineered Poetry and Pedagogy.” She organized her virtual talk by age-based government standards but with associated creative projects. She referenced a new article “The paper engineered Pumpkin King” https://academic.oup.com/adaptation/advance-article/doi/10.1093/adaptation/apad031/7281583

Next was Liz Garcia’s video-taped sharing of her book A-Z Words. Notably, she chose words and mechanisms that defined and enacted the meanings. A live presentation by Rienne Van Duin –“Large Scale theater Pop-ups” followed. She showed portable pop-ups ranging in size from 3 ft. to 7 ft, the largest for a travelling show of Alice In Wonderland. She explained the affordances of various materials for different ages of children. The host talk by Sean Higgins gave an overview of The American Greetings firm founded in 1906. Their holdings include American staples like Holly Hobby, Care Bears, and Strawberry Shortcake. Designing pop-ups since the 1950’s, they include material and virtual cards. Ben Sapp the director of the Mazza Museum followed. He discussed their noted collection of picture books including pop-up books from Matthew Reinhart and their important outreach work with disabled children.  https://www.mazzamuseum.org/

The renowned Ellen Rubin followed. In “Animated Advertising Exhibit-200 years of Premiums, promos, pop-ups, she recounted little-known intersections. She shared an early movable book: the 12^th century Liber Floridus at the University of Ghent that uses a GateFold https://www.liberfloridus.be/wat_eng.html

The keynote speaker was noted paper artist and engineer Peter Dahmen. In “Wendell and Wild” – Behind the Scenes look”, he recounted creating miniature models for the Netflix stop motion – animated film. We concluded by voting for the Meggendorfer Prize for Best Paper Engineering – Trade Publication, named after the revolutionary German illustrator and inventor Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925). The Prize was awarded to The Complexities of Pop Up: A Pop-Up Book for Aspiring Paper Engineers by David A. Carter and James Diaz, published by Proposition Press in 2021.