Research Proposal

I will be exploring why children's literature focuses on child characters being taken to a faraway, fantasy place. In exploring these fantasy pieces they will be told in an animated, unfolding pop-up book.

I went to pop-up books because I consider it one of the best ways to tell a story due to its interactivity as well as an appreciation for the craft. Children also seem to be drawn to pop-ups books because of their active nature and their sense of wonderment at the engineering (in a "how-did-they-do-that?" way). Fantasy is a genre that I pursued as a kid; most basic children's fables are fantasy and my favorite books at the age frame were A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth, both short novels focusing on a fantasy world being explored by a child/teen. I think this topic may change me in the sense of allowing me to go back by inner child and more fully embrace that which still influences me from childhood.

SOURCES:

Abrams, David M. and Brian Sutton-Smith. “The Development of the Trickster in Children’s Narrative”, The Journal of American Folklore 90.355 (1977): p. 29-47.

Gilead, Sarah. “Magic Abjured: Closure in Children’s Fantasy Fiction”, PMLA 106.2 (March 1991): p.277-293.

Kupper, Herbert. “Fantasy and the Theatre Arts”, Educational Theatre Journal 4.1 (March 1952): pp.33-38.

Irvine, Joan. How to Make Super-pops. Dover Publications, Inc., 2008.

Pape, Walter. “Happy Endings in a World of Misery: A Literary Convention between Social Constraints and Utopia in Children’s and Adult Literature”, Poetics Today 13.1 (Spring 1992): 179-96.

Schumann, Peter. “The Radicality of the Puppet Theatre”, TDR 35.4 (Winter 1991): p. 75-83.

Valenta, Barbara. Pop-O-Mania. Dial Books, 1997.

http://markhiner.co.uk/ (Awesome paper engineer with information about the history of pop-ups and other tidbits of knowledge)

http://robertsabuda.com/ (Considered one of the best pop-up artists in the world. Has lots of “making-of” info on pop-ups. Helpful!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-JD4XdpP5U (How to Video on Pop-ups uploaded by the Smithsonian Institute!)