The JIB Review is an A-Class academic journal for disciplinary area 11/A4 Literary, Linguistic and Philological Disciplines / Book and Document Sciences. The Journal is produced by the International Centre on Interactive Books in the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo. The Centre’s aim is to activate systematically, in both Italy and in connection with similar international institutions, studies, research, and conservative activities to safeguard and increase the appreciation of the cultural heritage of movable books of historical, artistic, scientific and didactic value with attention to the most recent and significant experiences in multimedia and art books.
JIB is an open access journal that applies a "Creative Commons - Attribuzione" (CC-BY) license to all published material. With the CC-BY license, authors retain the copyright on their contributions, while granting anyone the possibility to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute and/or copy the materials published by JIB, with the sole condition that the author and the title of the magazine are correctly cited. It is not necessary to request further permission from the author or the editorial staff of the journal.
Opening of the Pop-App Museum and Introduction to the New Issue
Copyright (c) 2026 Pompeo Vagliani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Pop-up Books Collection of Guan Zhongping.
This issue inaugurates a new section – destined to become a regular feature in forthcoming years – dedicated to collectors of movable books worldwide. The opening contribution is offered by a Chinese pop-up book collector, Guan Zhongpin of Beijing (China), who, through his own collection, outlines a “brief history of Chinese pop-up books,” a subject that has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature.
Copyright (c) 2026 Guan Zhongping https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Pop-ups in the Langhe: From Barolo to Truffles.
The text guides the reader through the author’s artistic journey in the field of pop-up books, characterized by a handcrafted approach and a strong three-dimensional sensibility. Through the projects presented, the pop-up becomes a tool for narrating and enhancing the Langhe region, intertwining artistic and personal dimensions.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gabriella Piccatto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Catalogue – and “Everything Comes to Life”.
The paper revisits and partly re-elaborates — supplementing it with further insights — the section concerning the “Hoepli case” from the essay authored by the present writer, Between Illustrated Albums and Movable Books: The Publishing Adventures of Lothar Meggendorfer in Italy and the Role of Ulrico Hoepli, published on the occasion of the opening of the first section of the Pop-App Museum and the centenary of the death of Lothar Meggendorfer. The results of the first-hand research conducted on that occasion are presented here in order to reach a broader international audience and to offer a renewed, more systematic and comprehensive perspective on the publisher’s production of movable books (and beyond). At the heart of the article is a catalogue of movable books published by Ulrico Hoepli (1879–1940), reconstructed with particular attention to titles, chronology, and sources.
Copyright (c) 2026 Eliana Angela Pollone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Movable Books of Vojt?ch Kubašta in the Collection of Società Economica di Chiavari
The exhibition Kubašta. The Movable Books of Vojtech Kubašta in the Collection of the Economic Society of Chiavari, hosted by the Società Economica di Chiavari as part of the L’arte in Economica series, proved to be a significant success in terms of attendance and public engagement. Held in the Quadreria on Via Ravaschieri from 6 to 22 December 2025, the exhibition featured 105 works by the renowned illustrator and paper engineer Vojtech Kubašta, offering a comprehensive overview of his movable book production. Due to its popularity, the exhibition was exceptionally extended with additional opening days in late December and early January 2026. The accompanying programme— including guided tours and pop-up workshops—was particularly well received, engaging a diverse audience and highlighting the educational and outreach value of the initiative.
Copyright (c) 2026 Donatella Curletto, Maria Simonella https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A gamebook for Christmas Eve (France, 1619-1710)
In 1619, a small collection of prayers for Christmas Eve appeared for the first time. On closer inspection, it is not a book but a collection of independent, detachable ‘notes’ designed for a role-playing game intended to spiritualize the evening of December 24. This collection is part of a spirituality of the childhood of Christ characteristic of the 17th century and Franciscan traditions, which invites women to associate themselves with the motherhood of the Virgin Mary. This article presents the six known editions of the Tablature spirituelle and questions the paradox of a ‘book’ (with a binding) intended for destruction, since the pages must be detached and distributed at random. The article also examines the gradual heritage status of this small collection, now reduced to a traditional book with luxurious bindings.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fabienne Henryot https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The article describes and analyses six historical sources on music teaching published in France in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century: five volumes with paper-based content and mobile devices, plus a board game. The focus of all six sources is the Meloplaste, an interactive instrument for teaching to sing invented by Pierre Galin and perfected by Édouard Jue (who associates it with the use of two volvelle: the Sphère Harmonique and the Tableau des Modulations). Geslin, who was more attentive to popular and traditional chant and chanson, proposed a publication that was not very usable but curious, and invented a ‘parlour game’ useful for inventing catchy melodies. Pierre Galin is the Maestro who describe a personal teaching experience started with musically illiterate children in the French provinces and developed in Paris as a trainer of future music teachers. Jue and Geslin are two of the most innovative, though least known, Parisian students. The study of sources has led to the historical reconstruction of a particularly lively environment, focusing on learning, influenced by the theories of J.J. Rousseau and J.B. Fourier, as evidenced in the pages of the weekly magazine “La Réforme musicale: journal des doctrines de l'École Galin-Paris-Chevé”. Analytical sheets describing the characteristics and functioning of the devices have been prepared and provided with QR codes.
Copyright (c) 2026 Roberta De Piccoli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article aims to bring to scholarly attention the existence of manuscript D.II.6 preserved at the National University Library of Turin. Produced in the first half of the sixteenth century and consisting of only a few folios, the codex contains astronomical diagrams enriched with numerous movable parts (volvelles), made of both parchment and paper. The article provides a codicological and palaeographical description of the artifact, followed by a reconstruction of the manuscript’s history. After examining the specific topics addressed in the text, the work is contextualized within the treatise genre to which it belongs, with the aim of highlighting the value of a document that is both highly distinctive and yet largely overlooked by scholarship.
Copyright (c) 2026 Fabio Uliana https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This contribution presents Oltre le pagine, a project combining a digital library and a virtual exhibition dedicated to pop-up and movable books. Three-dimensional books represent a distinctive editorial form in which narration unfolds through movement, space, and surprise. However, the material fragility and mechanical complexity of these objects make sustained access difficult in traditional library and museum settings. The project addresses this issue by experimenting with the integration of cataloguing practices, multimedia resources, and online exhibition environments. The digital library, developed in Omeka Classic, organizes a curated selection of pop-up books through descriptive records enriched with links to demonstration videos, audiovisual documents, and related artistic resources. The structure is articulated into two main collections: one devoted to works for adult audiences, in which animated books engage with cinema, authorial illustration, and cultural memory; the other focused on children’s books, centred on carousel books, paper theatres, and contemporary three-dimensional projects. Building on the cataloguing structure, the project develops a virtual exhibition on the Artsteps platform, transforming the collections into navigable exhibition rooms. The transition from the bibliographic record to three-dimensional space makes it possible to render the performative dimension of the pop-up book perceptible, proposing an alternative mode of access and cultural valorisation. The case study shows how digital curation tools and virtual environments can support digital libraries in documenting and disseminating interactive books, opening new perspectives for preservation, cultural mediation, and public access to complex book objects.
Copyright (c) 2026 amalia carrano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Masher, Gigerl, gommeux: Séraphin de Chiképatan between fashion and social satire
The article examines the movable book entitle Monsieur Séraphin de Chiképatan Natif de Gratin-les-Gommeux (Seine et Garonne.), the French 1894 edition by the Munich illustrator Lothar Meggendorfer. The volume, consisting of eight plates, characterised by a lever mechanism, in which the moving parts are set in motion by levers when a tab is pulled downwards. The contribution proposes an analysis of the figure of the masher – a synonym of the terms Gigerl and gommeux in the German and French editions – as a social and cultural typology of the late Nineteenth century. Through a detailed examination of the animated plates, the monochrome lithographic illustrations, and the verse texts by Ernest d’Hervilly, the article highlights how Meggendorfer constructs a scathing satire of the masher, portrayed as a failed womanizer, incapable of conforming to socio-economic codes, social conduct, and ideals of virility. The character of Séraphin de Chiképatan thus becomes a vehicle for critiquing phenomena of social emulation, emerging consumer culture, and ambiguities of gender and sexual orientation in the fin de siècle context. Finally, the essay situates the volume within Meggendorfer’s broader production, identifying iconographic and thematic affinities related to the figure of the masher, and confirming the uniqueness of Monsieur Séraphin de Chiképatan as the only publication entirely devoted to the figure of the awkward and inept bachelor.
Copyright (c) 2026 Arianna Re https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
As part of the program for the 12th edition of Pescara Comix & Games 2025. International Pop Culture Festival I gave a session entitled Movable Books: Discovering the Construction of a Pop-Up Book. This interactive, educational presentation focused on how movable books are designed and built in 2D and 3D. It combined an historical overview with simple practical demonstrations so brought the public closer to the world of these paper wonders.
Copyright (c) 2026 irene speziale https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Embodied Aesthetic Reading in Interactive Books for Toddlers.
Interactive books for young children invite readers to act through tactile, mechanical, and performative elements that transform reading into a multisensory event. Despite their growing presence in early childhood settings, the aesthetic and participatory dimensions of such books have received limited scholarly attention. This article examines how material interactivity is realized in shared reading situations involving toddlers aged one to three years in an Early Childhood Education and Care context. Combining literary analysis with qualitative ethnographic observation, the study analyses three contemporary interactive board books: JAFS! (2021), Little Talking Bear (2020), and Baby Giraffe (2020). Drawing on reader-response theory, particularly the work of Louise Rosenblatt and Wolfgang Iser, the article explores how different interactive mechanisms organize participation, bodily engagement, and meaning-making in reading events. The analyses show that interactive books for toddlers are not a homogeneous category but invite different forms of participation through distinct material mechanisms. By foregrounding how individual book designs organize participation differently, the article contributes to reader-response theory and advances research on interactive books by demonstrating how material mechanisms shape aesthetic participation in early childhood reading.
Copyright (c) 2026 Monica Gjelsten https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Theatrical movable books and toy theatres occupy a fertile middle ground between page and stage, where printed sheets become three-dimensional creative spaces. This paper examines that overlap through nineteenth-century theatrical movables and toy theatre materials preserved in two interrelated McGill Library collections: children’s literature and puppetry. Focusing on Alexandre Capendu’s Grand Théâtre en Actions (1879), Benjamin Pollock’s Sleeping Beauty toy theatre sheets, and movable works by Franz Bonn and Isabella Braun, the study traces a continuum from flat, printed plates to fully realized three-dimensional dioramas, foregrounding their shared design techniques, modes of interaction, and destructive creation. Theatrical movables adapt toy theatre scenography and puppetry’s ensecretage to invite readers into roles of interactor, puppeteer, and spectator at once. Comparative analysis of mechanisms – multiple-layer set-up dioramas, tab-lift stage sets, and lever-animated figures – shows how paper engineering choreographs gesture, scripting specific actions, while toy theatres allow for greater improvisation and open-ended play. The intersections of toy theatres and theatrical movables reveal a dynamic interplay of print, performance, and childhood creativity that enriches histories of the book, domestic theatre, and interactive reading practices.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jacquelyn Sundberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper examines the experimental project Dioramami, an investigation into the narrative potential of the interactive book as a threshold device between documentary reality (photography) and dreamlike fiction (illustration). Through the analysis of three original case studies — The World Above, the Carousel of Memory, and the Autobiographical Box — the research explores how different paper engineering structures (pop-up, carousel, and tunnel books) act as tools for translating private memories and pedagogical concepts. Drawing on the author’s roots in the world of historical publishing, the essay describes a hybrid workflow that combines digital design with meticulous manual craftsmanship. The goal is to demonstrate how the recovery of ancient artisanal techniques, integrated with multimedia languages, allows the interactive book to function as a modern "cabinet of wonders," meeting the needs of contemporary visual communication while preserving the tactility of the artistic artifact.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gaia Tagliapietra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Between Paper Engineering and Orality: Little Red Riding Hood in the Interactive Books of Warja Lavater and Dominique Lagraula
The fairy tale has long attracted numerous authors over the centuries. In the artist’s book, the polysemy of the fairy tale finds new fields of investigation. As an object of art, the artist’s book gives orality a new dimension, crossing the material and spatial boundaries of the page. This analysis focuses specifically on the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale in the works of Warja Lavater and Dominique Lagraula. The paper-engineering, mechanical structure, and iconographic choices characterizing the selected books offer the fairy tale evolving space-time narrative possibilities. Both versions clearly demonstrate how the materiality and interactive dimension of the works, through an essential iconography, provide the reader with an experience that can enhance the development of visual literacy, constituting an important pedagogical, artistic, individual, and collective experience, in which orality becomes an immersive and conscious experience.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jessica Paolillo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Hands That Read: The Book Body as Interface in Interactive Picture Books (2010–2025).
This article offers a theoretical account of interactive picture books as epistemic objects, proposing the book body as interface that stages meaning through material and hybrid operations. Spanning 2010–2025, from engineered print to page-registered AR, we synthesize visual-culture, multimodality, and material engagement theory to show how flaps, windows, pull-tabs, volvelles, leporello, transparencies, and AR overlays implement a mechanics of discovery (cue - action - reveal - re-framing). We formalize three construct manipulations as evidence, attentional traction, and retroactive contextualization - explaining how gestures externalize inference, steer attention, and license reinterpretation. Methodologically, we specify micro-analytic interaction scripts and propose interaction maps (states × actions) to model exploration topologies without empirical datasets. Our core contribution is a typology mapping mechanism ? information operation ? cognitive function, clarifying why multi-step, consequence-bearing interactions support spatial reasoning, causal rehearsal, classification, and language development, whereas surface busyness risks extraneous load. We theorize print - AR “hybrid bridges”: AR acts as a registered lens that models hidden processes and scales while preserving reference to the page. Accessibility and ethics are constitutive - redundant multimodal cues, inclusive imagery, privacy-by-design, and sustainable, page-complete pathways - summarized by three maxims: constrain to enable, cue before you ask, and augment, never gate. The framework offers design-to-cognition principles and a transferable vocabulary that subsequent studies can operationalize across developmental stages and cultural editions, aligning aesthetics, cognition, and ethics in post-digital picture book literacy.
Copyright (c) 2026 Milan Mašát https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Milestone and a New Challenge: Towards the... POP-APP MUSEUM
Copyright (c) 2025 Pompeo Vagliani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Ma contribution pour faire connaître le monde des livres animés
Dans ce texte, je raconte la genèse d’une conférence sur l’évolution du livre animé, qui s’est finalement transformée en un film de 55 minutes accessible en ligne. J’y décris le processus créatif et technique que j’ai suivi : des recherches iconographiques et historiques (avec l’aide de mon amie Graziella Albanèse), l’animation des livres de ma collection personnelle, et l’usage de l’ordinateur pour libérer les images de leurs contraintes physiques. Mon récit traverse plusieurs siècles d’histoire, de la première volvelle de 1240 jusqu’à la réalité augmentée d’aujourd’hui, avec pour ambition de rendre cette narration plus vivante et captivante pour le public.
Copyright (c) 2025 Patrik Lecoq https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Interactive books as an interdisciplinary pedagogic tool
This review explains the pedagogic experience of a hands-on workshop held with the students of Design and Visual Communication (Politecnico di Torino) and the inter-university degree course in Sustainable Design for food systems in partnership with the University of Parma, part of the DeisgnWorkshop project and with the collaboration of MODlab Design, Model lab of the Design department, and POP-APP, International Centre on Interactive Books
Copyright (c) 2025 Paola Fagnola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Musicae practicae. Books with Movable Devices in Music Dissemination: A Research Projec
This article marks the starting point of a specific line of research focused on movable devices and the dissemination of music. The topic emerged within the research project Animated and Pop-Up Books, led by the International Centre on Interactive Books in Turin, but gradually took shape as an independent path through ongoing dialogue and interaction with previous studies and in-depth explorations on the theme of "playful learning." At the heart of the research lies the extraordinary availability of historical sources provided by the Archive-Library of the Tancredi di Barolo Foundation, to which the Centre is affiliated, as well as the generous participation of all the staff who bring it to life. The ongoing documentation process aims to explore and assess a possible historical relationship between technological development, the evolution of creative thinking, and the shaping of educational models in the Western world. While the study, whose collected data will be presented progressively, gives particular emphasis to nineteenth-century France, it also takes a broader geographical scope into account. For the sake of clarity and structure, the sources and analyses will be presented in later issues of this journal, with the aim of providing adequate space for further exploration of twentieth-century contexts and additional collaborations.
Copyright (c) 2025 Roberta De Piccoli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Notes of two activities related to movable books at Cambridge University in England. The first activity involved being an external examiner for a thesis at the Faculty of Education, Homerton College. The second was a study day comparing English-language movable books for children with Japanese movable books for adults. Although the entire program lasted only a day and a half, it had a profound impact and revolutionized the author’s thinking about movable books.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jacqueline Reid-Walsh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Raise or turn, follow the story and admire.
Flaps and volvelles are the first devices of paper engineering in movable books, with a long tradition in technical and scientific fields. In Italy, between the end of the 19th century and the mid-20th century, their presence in the extracurricular sector is quite strong, while it is underrepresented and slow to appear in contemporary children’s books, for which it takes on new forms. The contribution, in addition to questioning the possible reasons for this delay, presents a review of titles aimed at children published in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s that contain flaps or wheels, mostly of local creation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Eliana Angela Pollone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Playful Science: Games, Didactic Resources, and Interactive Books
This paper presents an expanded version of the talk delivered on December 12, 2024, at the seminar "Emersioni di carta. Giochi e pagine di scienza per ragazzi tra Otto e Novecento" It is enriched with additional data and insights. Beginning with Comenius’s Orbis Pictus (1658), the contribution showcases a selection of scientific books featuring volvelles, along with loose sheets, rotating planispheres, and astronomical games. These items are part of a careful overview of little-known interactive materials, most of which belong to the collections hosted by the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo in Turin.
This article exposes how a minute-and-a-half-long animated pop-up book sequence in StudioCanal’s blockbuster Paddington 2 (2017) was used as a commercial, and creative, springboard by the film franchise to reinstate the figure of Paddington as an enduring icon – not only of British children’s literature, but British culture, identity and heritage more broadly. Utilised as a movie prop and animated dreamscape within the film, and as a sculpture trail and movable merchandise beyond the film, I investigate how the format of the scenic pop-up book has been reimagined by creatives collaborating across artistic fields, both before and after the film’s release. This web of pop-up book experiences works to reintroduce Michael Bond’s young bear to new generation of transliterate young consumers who are accustomed to exploring storyworlds via multiple media channels. I address how the ‘user’ is repositioned as a flaneur of a fantastical ‘bookscape’ of London across three different media formats – by watching a computer-generated, NUKE-projection animation sequence accompanied by a clairaudient musical score, by navigating a site-specific, interactive sculpture trail, and by playing with a collectable, paper-engineered replica of a movie prop. Ultimately, this case study exposes how the transportive, sensory and self-reflexive qualities of the pop-up book, when remediated within high-budget transmedia children’s franchises such as Paddington, can be exploited to create a bridge between fictional storyworlds and real-world environments in order to reanimate the cultural resonance of an established character in an age of media convergence.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jodie Coates https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Schaller & Kirn: A Short History and List of Movable Books
This article explores the history and legacy of Schaller & Kirn, a prominent German lithographic and movable book publishing company founded in 1884 by Carl Schaller and Hugo Kirn. The partnership, which lasted only a couple of years, produced a significant number of high-quality interactive and movable books. Schaller & Kirn's imprint is associated with the rapid growth of interactive literature in the late 19th century, an era marked by innovation in printing and design. Despite the short duration of the collaboration, the company's output was prolific, as was the continued output from Carl Schaller. By researching auction records, nineteenth-century books via Google Books, WorldCat, online libraries, and corresponding with fellow collectors and book dealers, we have discovered over 40 movable titles in various languages, including German, English, Dutch, and French. These works often featured intricate mechanisms such as pull-tabs, rotating disks, and foldable scenes, sometimes adding gold foil. Their output almost certainly exceeds this number; additional titles may never be discovered, and known titles may never resurface. Following the dissolution of the partnership in 1885, Carl Schaller continued the business under his name, producing movable books for several years before his death in 1919. Hugo Kirn, after leaving Schaller & Kirn, went on to establish other ventures in toy manufacturing and lithography, contributing further to the toy industry. This article also provides an overview of the various known movable titles published by Schaller & Kirn and later just Carl Schaller. The brief existence of Schaller & Kirn as a partnership left little opportunity for second editions under their imprint, which contributes to the rarity of their works today. This limited print run makes surviving copies invaluable artifacts in the history of interactive children's literature.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jo Diedrich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Kubasta: magic of Vojtech Kubasta's Pop-up Books in the Collection of Mauro Pierluigi
A remarkable collection of "pieces" by the famous illustrator Vojtech Kubasta has been donated to the Library of the Società Economica di Chiavari (Italy).
Copyright (c) 2025 Maria Simonella https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The availability of a glossary for interactive books has long been hoped for in particular by those who, in the absence of standardized guidelines, deal with the cataloging of interactive books but also by scholars and specialists who often find themselves discussing these materials starting from different presuppositions, conceptual and linguistic. In the first instance the glossary problem concerns books, but in practice it also includes objects which are not books but which present similar devices. The current situation sees a variety of definitions consolidated in various languages and even within the same language, which show terminological habits and implicit choices that make comparison and standardization difficult. This phenomenon is particularly relevant with regard to children’s books which present an extreme variety in devices and their combinations, require multiple actions and generate different effects, often with narrative functions and with playful and educational objectives. The methodological hypothesis is that the glossary should start not so much from the comparison of the various definitions currently in place (which in any case must be kept in mind) but from the construction of an explicit taxonomy, a tree classification of similar objects in classes and subclasses, based on which to standardize the lexical aspects. That is, starting from the observation of objects and inductively proposing definitions. In the second part of the article, a close analysis of the ‘flap’ device is proposed as an example, apparently simple but extremely flexible, capable of stimulating, especially in the field of children’s books, ever new creative experiments for which ones to find the ‘right’ name.
Copyright (c) 2024 Eliana A. Pollone, Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Pompeo Vagliani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The editorial aims first to share with you our new ideas about the Journal. These include the organization, the format and most importantly our re-visioning of the project. In conclusion, we would like to briefly describe this issue’s articles.
Copyright (c) 2024 Pompeo Vagliani, Jacqueline Reid-Walsh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of the exibition of livresanimes.com (Paris, 23 November 2023), the first French site entirely dedicated to pop-up and movable books.
Copyright (c) 2024 Nicolas Codron https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Pietro Franchi was a passionate lover, collector and scholar of Interactive books, who died in February 2024. Franchi had an internationally recognized role for his pioneering essay Apriti libro! Meccanismi, figure, tridimensionalità in libri animati dal XVI al XX secolo, the first significant contribution in Italian on the subject.
Copyright (c) 2024 Pompeo Vagliani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0