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What's interesting about what I do, when you open the pages of a pop-up book,
like bam, it's right there.
It's this huge thing, and it's a surprise.
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My name is Matthew Reinhart, and I am a creator of pop-up books.
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The pop-up book that we're gonna create today is inspired by those little things
that get under your skin.
It's like ticks, eyelash mites, and things that get under my skin.
Talking heads on television, especially on news channels.
People that talk in the elevator on their phones, which drives me nuts and
we're gonna make it pop up on a page.
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Well, my process for making a pop-up, I start to think about how things are going
to move on the page and what's going to be impactful in certain scenes.
And I think about the visual things that might happen,
the movement that might happen.
I'm gonna think about what is the most important part about a tick.
Well, of course, the grossest thing is the huge, distended abdomen filled with blood.
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When I was younger my parents lived in a very wooded area and
I went running with my dogs.
It was in the swamp and there were alligators and snakes and
everything we were always jumping over.
Later that night, I went to go to the bathroom and
I felt something on me in a place that I don't usually make pop-ups about.
I realized that there was a tick on my private parts.
Getting it off was just awful.
I'm gonna exorcise that demon.
We're gonna make a big blood engorged tick.
And if you open it right, it kinda peeks out and actually tries to bite you.
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There's those people that just think that the elevator is their space to hang out
and talk.
She's talking to her mom and
she's talking about whatever her boyfriend did that wasn't so great.
And it's kind of uncomfortable,
it just drives me kinda crazy cuz I don't wanna hear it.
So what I do, when that happens I'll start to whistle really loud,
cuz I can whistle pretty loud.
And she's not paying attention, and I'm not paying attention.
There's nothing like the Star War's theme to get someone to shut up.
[SOUND] But you gotta do it super loud,
it's gotta be like [SOUND] like ear splitting, and
she finally stopped after I did that.
There's an asshole in the elevator.
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I'm cutting and folding paper and putting it together and
I know these mechanisms but it's almost like I'm sculpting.
You see the end of the journey but
you don't see the path on the way to get there.
And a lot of times I don't know where I'm going at all.
Once I've figured out that engineering, cut and fold the paper, and I like what
I've created and how the movement works, then the next step is refining the pop-up.
There are a lot of wrong turns that I'll take along the way.
And sometimes some of the mistakes, the things that I was almost gonna throw away,
might be a really good path to take.
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I was a kid that always drew growing up, it was always my art, making stuff, and
it was something I did instinctually.
I don't know, I just wanted to make stuff out of whatever I could find.
And when you're young, you don't have a lot of materials.
You take what you can find, and at the time all I had was paper, cardboard.
I didn't have a lot of pop-ups.
I had one and it was destroyed.
My little sister ripped it apart so I never really thought about pop-ups
as a thing until I was older, but I was making them.
So this was one right here, I was a teen in the 80s.
I made inserts to a mixtape for a friend and it was a pop-up and
I didn't even realize that's what it was.
It kinda freaks me out, especially when I see stuff like that old pop-up,
because it's something that I was doing naturally.
But it didn't register and then all of a sudden that's your job.
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I wasn't a big reader as a kid.
I read Star Wars comics and thought those were the best things in the world.
And then to be able to make books that are kind of different and interesting.
I hope that they might pull young readers who aren't necessarily into just
the words.
Get them excited about being there, making a world happen on the page.
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The most important thing to me is to get a reader excited
about being there in a book.
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