Joan Irvine

Designed for children, the instructions for this pop-up craft book are generally clear. The examples are appealing to children (like making a card with dragons breathing fire), and my elementary nieces and nephews have enjoyed this book immensely. My preschool children have enjoyed the book as well, but most projects they've needed my help with (although they've come up with some admirable variations on their own). I think once they understand the techniques, they're better able to follow show more the instructions. Sometimes the illustrations are not precise and cause difficulty for children who rely heavily on pictures. Overall, the book is well worth the money, although I would recommend searching for an older edition that is hardbound. The book is sure to be used a great deal. show less

“How to Make Super Pop-Ups” by Joan Irvine is a “How to Craft” book for children. This book may provide hours of entertainment on rainy days as well as teach other valuable skills. One of things that I enjoyed about this book is that, with a minimal amount of material expense, the reader can learn to follow simple written directions to create clever pop-up books. I felt the book was designed for children in 4th grade and up, since the book reads something like a recipe book. The show more reader has to follow simple directions to create the products that are displayed in the book. With some guidance from an adult, children can practice their manual dexterity with folding, cutting, and manipulating paper. The illustrations are very helpful and aide the reader in following the specific directions. However, I would have added a section of scaled pop-up patterns since some readers are not artists, in this way the end product will more likely look similar to the model that is displayed in the book. There is no fun in spending money, time, and effort on a project that yields a poorly designed end product. I would defiantly recommend this book to any children who enjoy origami, since readers are creating art projects by manipulating paper.
Ages 4th grade and Up show less

This how to book provides step by step instructions on how to create pop-up art activities for various holidays. It includes many holidays from around the world and gives a brief description of each. I would not read this book aloud to a class, but would use it as a resource for planning lessons and teaching some of the art activities. I plan to use several of the ideas during our "diversity" unit when we study holidays around the world.

Based on a relatively quick glance at the book, it seems to be very useful. Lots of projects, advice, basic definitions and explanations, concluding with four basic, "very useful," pop-up techniques.