What A Surprise: A Mechanical Book for Children

Pp. 9 + 6 moving dissolving pictures, based on the venetian blind principle. all parts present, all need repairing to work again. Pages loose with some marks. Original cloth-backed pictorial glazed boards, rubbed..Ernest Nister (1842-1909) specialized in coloured toy and movable picture books. He used a wide range of movable techniques to intrigue children. The popular late nineteenth-century format of changing pictures capitalizes on a child's fascination with peek-a-boo. Nister animated his pages with simple slats, dimensional scenes, and pinwheel mechanics. With these basic paper tools, he created fantastic transformations of dissolving pictures, based on the venetian blind principle. -The illustrations in these books had a picture divided into two, four or five equal sections by corresponding horizontal or vertical slits. When a tab at the side or bottom of the illustration was pulled, the picture 'transformed' into another picture- To see more images go to:- [View Bookseller's Homepage]