The books are complex, and much of the work is highly delicate.

The books are complex, and much of the work is highly delicate.
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's great fun to show paper engineer Robert Sabuda's newest book to adults who aren't familiar with his work.
When they open the cover of "America the Beautiful," Sabuda's paper version of the Golden Gate Bridge springs up in all its 3-D glory. At the front of the two-page spread, tiny white boats unfold on the blue-green water: a sailboat, a ship, two boats in between.
Jaws drop. Eyes widen. "Wow!"
Then, after another page or two, "This isn't for kids!"
It's labeled "not suitable for children under 5." But if "America" is given even to older kids, it's likely to be with some trepidation, and faint hope that it will last long enough for the parents to enjoy, too.
Although published by Little Simon, a children's book imprint of Simon & amp; Schuster, this is no board book with simple, sturdy flaps and pull-tabs.
Delicate work
In even the least intricate of Sabuda's stylish designs, more than a dozen bits of paper unfold into an astonishing and wonderful view in white upon a colored page.
There's Mount Rushmore, with a buffalo in the foreground and a mountain goat on a crag in the background. Another page opens to reveal the rock houses of Mesa Verde, with birds flying up from the bushes.
That one appears to be the most complex, but it's the Mississippi River stern-wheeler that is most delicate. Closing that page too quickly, without making sure the steamboat is folding smoothly backward -- it might need help with a gentle pull on its reinforced center stern-wheel piece -- will damage it irretrievably.
The riverboat, according to Little Simon, is the most complex bit of paper engineering Sabuda has ever done.
The text is the lyrics of "America, the Beautiful," written by Katharine Lee Bates a century ago.
The illustrations are as ardent a hymn to America as the poem. There is humor -- a cow pokes her head out of the barn behind the "amber waves of grain" and a dog chases a cat chasing a duck in the front of the field. But it is belief, not irony, that couples the pop-up of the U.S. Capitol with the line, "And crown thy good with brotherhood."
The final page has a two-page spread of the Statue of Liberty and a miniature eight-page booklet with seven more verses and four more pop-ups.
Complex design
Anton Radevsky's "Architecture" book has six two-page spreads with at least three pop-ups each.
There also are plenty of small flaps -- for instance, an exterior view of the Temple of Hons in Karnak, Egypt, is on a flap that lifts to reveal a cutaway view of the temple -- as well as unflapped illustrations.
Add text to describe everything, and the layout gets crowded and the print small. But when you're covering everything from Babylonian ziggurats to the Guggenheim museums in both New York and Bilbao, Spain, there's plenty to fit in.
Some of the models are so complex or big that the reader has to help assemble them. For instance, Notre Dame's towers are in a pocket that slides out from the left edge of its page; in addition, the arc of buttresses at the back pulls around to be held together by Velcro tabs.
It's fun, with a fair amount of "wow."
Other books
Chuck Fischer's "The White House" is a prettier book, but simpler and somewhat less interesting. Only two of the pop-ups are architectural, and it relies heavily on what amount to small pasted-in pamphlets.
"The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" may appear to be for a young audience. But the story, Stephen King's young-adult novel stripped to short-story length by Peter Abrahams, is not for anyone prone to nightmares. Nor are Alan Dingman's illustrations, made 3-D and often animated by paper engineer Kees Moerbeck.
It's about a 9-year-old girl who gets lost on the Appalachian Trail. She nearly starves. She gets pneumonia. She hallucinates that her hero, pitcher Tom Gordon (then of the Boston Red Sox), is with her -- and that the God of the Lost, with fangs, huge claws and a face of stinging insects, is after her.
It's hard to tell just what age it's aimed at -- most likely King fans who want everything that has his name on it. Kids old enough to read the original novel might think they are too old for pop-ups -- at least, that is, until they become adults!
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