Fairies and Tree Nymphs Are Popping Up All Over

Jennifer M. Brown, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 9/3/2008

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Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart on the making of a pop-up book

From Cinderella's godmother to Titania in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the lore of fairyland has long fascinated children worldwide. But it would be hard to find a more impressive collection of enchanted beings than the one bursting from the pages of Fairies and Magical Creatures (Candlewick, 2008), conceived and designed by Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda. Together these artists and paper engineers extraordinaire have created the informative and entertaining “Encyclopedia Prehistorica” series (Dinosaurs; Mega-Beasts; Sharks and Other Sea Creatures [all Candlewick]). 

Now they turn their attention to fairies and their kin with this first title in the “Encyclopedia Mythologica” series. Here the two discuss their exhaustive research, their decisions about what to spotlight, and the challenges of this three-dimensional extravaganza.

With the “Encyclopedia Prehistorica” series, you were primarily dealing with real creatures. You must have had to sift through a tremendous amount of material for the mythologies and legends of fairies. How did you decide what to include?

Matthew Reinhart: A lot of what's in Fairies came from Europe and the British Isles, because the folklore there about fairies is much richer. But there were stories elsewhere that parallel [these tales] that we wanted to include as well. I did the research and made sure that everything [in our book] was based on an existing myth or folklore story. When making the illustrations, we always tried to look at the classic versions. 

Was it hard to decide which storytellers to select? For instance, you include characters from the tales of Shakespeare and Charles Perrault, but also those introduced by lesser-known individuals such as Robert Kirk, the 17th-century Scottish pastor and anthologist.

MR:  Titania, the Queen of the Fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, is so well known that we had to include her. It was unbelievably hard [to choose] because so many of the stories contradict one another, and some are really violent.

Robert Sabuda: And then there were the fairies that bite people's heads off.

MR: And you want to create a certain tone. 

RS: A balance.

MR: I think kids are pretty savvy about the way of the world; you don't have to sugarcoat things. But I didn't want this to be a gore fest. Because there were so many monsters in the “Mythologica” series we imagined that Fairies would be as monstrous. And, initially, there were more ghosts and witches; but it didn't feel right. There are so many benevolent, fantastic fairies. So we thought, let's save [the scary creatures] for another book. Then it became much easier to select the stories.

With your other books, you didn't deal with storytellers to the same degree, did you?

RS: That's right. A book like this is different because you're talking about cultures. And how are we going to be able to represent all these varieties of cultures?

MR: Right now I'm doing research for our second book, Gods and Heroes. Everyone wants to read about Roman and Greek gods, because they're the most popular, but it's not fair—there are so many other stories! We're trying to give everyone space.

RS: With our limited real estate. 

Each of you has done your own writing and research, your own illustrations and your own paper engineering. When you work together, how do you decide who does what?

RS: It's not nearly as clearly defined as people may think. For a series like “Encyclopedia Prehistorica,” Matt, who has a degree in biology, knows a great deal more than I do about anatomy and how animals move. I know a little bit more about engineering: if the anatomy is like that, then the engineering should be like this. It just depends. We wear so many different hats in our studio. I'll show him something and say, “What do you think of this?” And [Matt will] come over and say, “Do you like the paper for this? Should the fairy wings be lighter or darker, or more transparent?” We work almost as one a lot. It's fluid. 

Fairies and Magical Creatures  (Reinhart & Sabuda)  © 2008 by Reinhart & Sabuda

MR: With each book, we evolve a little bit more—especially with the art, we keep moving forward.

RS: I think the one true constant in life for an artist is change. Sometimes things occur that Matthew won't see, that I won't see, that are really subconscious changes to who we are as artists. That tree that you point out is an unusual type of magical being. One of the great things about doing this book is that we get to explore creatures beyond the pink fairies. The palette changes because we're looking [at them] from a wider perspective. I like [the idea of] a fairy taking some organic form, like a tree. You don't normally see [fairies] represented in that form unless they're frightening or wicked.

MR: [The hamadryad] was tough because, we were trying to get the balance between tree and human. In the initial design, she was bug-eyed, and started to get scary. I wanted her to interact with animals, with the birds, to make her look friendlier.

RS: But she's never going to be Snow White. 

Can you describe how you created the Fay prank (casting a “glamour,” or fairy spell), in which the beautiful blond maid—in four tiny spreads—turns into a hag? Was that difficult to pull off, in the art and in the engineering?

MR:  We've used those animated pop-ups a couple times. We used it in Fairies because I wanted to be able to show a transformation from a beautiful princess into an ugly troll. Plotting it was really hard. [You want to make sure that,] working with the mechanism, the faces line up properly, and the body works.

RS: It's not done until it works.

You mentioned finding parallel stories. One creature that caught my attention was the kallikantzaroi, the fairies that ride chickens and cause “misfortune” for farmers.

MR: I don't even know if I could pronounce that! It was fun to do the art for this because there's not a tremendous amount of reference for it. It was great to bring it alive as a story, even if it's just a tiny picture.

RS: We don't make pop-up books as tools to teach or to learn from exclusively. The reason for the little chicken thing is because it's cool. The kids in us love it because it's funny. And it existed.

The kallikantzaroi remind me of Baba Yaga, the witch who lives in a house set on chicken legs.

MR: Yes! Baba Yaga will probably be in Gods and Heroes because we must have our villains. She's a misunderstood character. Sometimes Baba Yaga is good to those who are true of heart.

RS: A lot of that stuff never really goes away, in a good way. Different characters in different cultures play the same role.

MR: I think people love to read about these mythological characters because everyone knows about them, in some way, in their own culture. It's just hard to pronounce all their names.

RS: Like the chicken one.

MR: I'll spell it, but I won't say it. 

Learn more about these author-artists and how to make pop-ups on their Web sites: www.MatthewReinhart.com; www.RobertSabuda.com. 

Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart on the making of a pop-up book

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